John  Ruskin 

by  ^ 

M.  H.  Spielmann 


THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 


JOHN    RUSKIN 


JOHN   RUSKIN 

A  Sketch  of  His  Life,  His  Work,  and  His  Opinions 
With  Personal  Reminiscences  . 


BY 

M.    H.    SPIELMANN 

JtUTHOR  OF  HENRIETTE  RONNER,  THE 
irORKS  OF  G.  F.  TVATTS,  R.A.,  ETC. 
EDITOR    OF    THE    MAGAZINE    OF   ART 


TOGETHER   WITH 
A  PAPER  BY  JOHN  RUSKIN,   ENTITLED 

THE   BLACK   ARTS 

AND   A    NOTK   ON   RUSKIN   BY    HARRISON   S.  MORRIS,  MANAGING 
DIRECTOR   ACADEMY  OF   FINE   ARTS,    PHILADELPHIA,   PA. 

ILLUSTRATED 


PHILADELPHIA 
J.   B.   LIPPINCOTT   COMPANY 

MDCCCC 


Copyright,  1900, 

BY 

J.  B.  LIPPINCOTT  Company. 


Printed  •y  J.  B.  Lippincott  Company,  Philadelphia. 


S15 


I   DEDICATE  THIS   BOOK 


MY   WIFE. 


6443'0'<' 


A   NOTE   ON   RUSKIN. 


The  dying  century  for  which  he  has  laboured 
so  valiantly  marks  the  death  of  John  Ruskin. 

On  Saturday,  the  twentieth  of  January, 
1900,  he  passed  into  the  brightness  of  that 
day  whose  herald  he  has  been,  and  his  many 
books  alone  shall  henceforth  speak  for  him. 
He  saw  the  light  and  caught  the  sounds  from 
beyond  our  ken.  He  was  the  pilot  of  our 
race,  leading  the  way  into  the  realm  of  beauty 
that  alone  is  truth.  We  gave  him  little  heed ; 
we  flouted  his  noble  words ;  we  laughed  at  his 
whims  and  worries ;  we  pressed  forward  with 
steam  and  sordid  desire  in  his  despite.  But 
as  surely  as  the  odour  from  a  flower   steals 

(5) 


6  JOHN  RUSKIN. 

out  and  purifies  the  air,  as  irresistibly  as  the 
brook  runs  into  the  unacknowledorine  sea,  so  do 
his  opinions,  his  ethics,  his  very  syllables,  enter 
and  take  part  in  our  existence.  We  cannot 
silence  them  with  jeers,  for  they  are  as  silent 
in  their  influence  as  an  odour,  nor  can  we  stifle 
them  with  ignorance.  Each  author,  journalist, 
versifier,  preacher,  uses  unheedingly  a  speech 
made  purer  by  this  master  of  our  tongue,  and 
each  must  utter  the  code,  in  whatsoever  form, 
which  the  purer  lips  and  richer  brain  have 
made  a  part  of  our  unconscious  thought. 

It  is  the  mission  of  such  a  soul  as  John 
Ruskin's  to  deal  with  contemporary  things 
rather  than  with  elemental  ones.  He  was 
born  a  lofty  antagonist  of  besetting  ills.  He 
saw,  indeed,  the  deeper  purport  of  events, 
and  spoke  with  profound  meaning  of  them; 
the  heights  of  erudition  were  early  conquered, 
and  the  meaning  and  purpose  of  life  and  death 
were  clear.  But,  instead  of  touching  a  creative 
chord,    these    thrilled    to    the    dragon    at   the 


JOHN  R  US  KIN.  7 

gates,    and   he   fought   Hke   a    hero    with    the 
foe. 

Such  a  contest  demands  the  quaHties  which 
upHft  a  people ;  but  when  the  knightly  lance 
is  forever  at  rest,  the  hero  is  a  memory.  His 
work  is  over ;  it  is  history,  and  its  interest  for 
the  generations  is  the  interest  of  history,  and 
not  the  interest  of  living  and  elemental  force. 

Ruskin's  work  is  over.  He  lies  with  his  great 
ancestors  in  the  English  valhalla  of  thought,  with 
Bacon  and  Jeremy  Taylor  and  Burke,  with 
Coleridge  and  Haydon  and  Carlyle.  The 
ofood  he  achieved  is  the  world's,  and  the  world 
will  hold  him  in  blessed  remembrance  while 
beauty  rests  in  the  open  landscape  or  rises 
into  forms  of  stone  that  shall  endure. 

His  own  volumes  are  his  best  exponents. 
They  are  the  ripeness  of  his  gleanings.  They 
eive  the  man's  thought  and  mental  stature  ; 
but  they  omit  the  man.  In  the  pages  that 
follow  some  of  the  personal  threads  of  his 
great  career  are  woven  into  a  likeness  of 
him,  and   the    reader   who    has   drunk   at   his 


8  JOHN  R  US  KIN. 

"well  of  English  u n defiled "  will  find  here 
matter  with  which  to  realize  the  person  who 
animates  the  books. 

Harrison  S.  Morris. 


PREFATORY  NOTE. 


This  book  is  intended  to  present  a  brief  out- 
line of  the  life  and  opinions  of  the  "  Sage  of 
Coniston,"  together  with  some  account  of  his 
personality,  which  I  have  had  the  opportunity 
of  gaining  a  knowledge  of  in  his  company  and 
in  that  of  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Arthur  Severn ;  as 
well  as  by  the  study  of  his  writings  and  by  in- 
quiry into  the  impressions  made  by  Ruskin 
upon  some  of  the  chief  writers  of  the  day. 

I  have  also  included  the  recital  of  certain 
facts  and  correspondence  that  arose  out  of  our 
intercourse,  deeming  them  interesting  enough 
to  be  placed  on  record,  not  otherwise,  perhaps, 
preservable. 


CONTENTS. 


■  01 

PAGB 

Introduction          15 

•TlIS   l^lFE              •••         ..*         ,.,         ...         ...         ...         ...         ...         ...  IJ 

Character,  Health,  and  Temperament         40 

Author,  Bookman,  and  Stylist     67 

The  Artist    73 

The  Teacher          80 

The  Educationist 92 

His  View  of  Things       96 

The  Letter-Writer       103 

The  Poet       109 

RusKiN  and  George  Cruikshank 115 

BrANTWOOD      12$ 

'♦The  Angel  in  the  House" 145 

Home-Life  at  Coniston          157 

The  Portraits  of  Ruskin       165 

"The  Black  Arts."     By  John  Ruskin 199 

Epilogue        218 

Xi^X^J-fAs  •••      »••      •••      •••      •••      •••      •••      •••      •••      •••  ^^  A 

II 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 


PAGB 

I. — John  RusKiN,  1881.    By  Prof.  Herkomer,  R.A.      Frontispiece 
2, —  „  1822.     By.  James  Northcote,  R.A.       ...       19 

3.—  „  1824.  „  „  ...       23 

4. — Christchurch  College,  Oxford;   showing  Ruskin's 

Rooms         27 

5. — The  Ruskin  Drawing  School,  Oxford 35 

6. — John  Ruskin,  1842.     By  George  Richmond,  R.A.     ...      47 
7. —  „  1853.     At  Glenfinlas  Waterfall.     By 

Sir  J.  MiLLAis,  Br.,  R.A , 61 

8. — A  Page  of  One  of  Ruskin's  Note-books,  for  "The 

Stones  of  Venice"     77 

9. — Cathedral  Spire,  Rouen.     By  John  Ruskin 81 

10. — ^John  Ruskin,  1857.     By  George  Richmond,  R.A.     ...       85 
II. —  „  1866.     From  a  Photograph  by  Elliott 

AND  Fry     97 

12. — John  Ruskin,  1876.     By  Georges  Pilotelle    11 1 

13. — Brantwood  from  Coniston  Lake.     By  Arthur  Sev- 
ern, R.I 127 

14. — John   Ruskin,  1877.      From  the   Bust  by  Benjamin 

Creswick 131 

15. — Ruskin's  Study  at  Brantwood.     By    Arthur  Sev- 
ern, R.I 135 

16. — Ruskin's  Bedroom,  Brantwood        141 

17. — Mrs.  Arthur  Severn.     By  Joseph  Severn      149 

18. — John  Ruskin,  1880.     From  the  Bust  by  Sir   Edgar 

Boehm,  Bt.,  R.A 153 

19. — John  Ruskin,  1882.    From  a  Photograph  by  Bar- 

RAUD  167 

20. — John    Ruskin,  1884.     From    the    Bust    by    Conrad 

URESSL>£R     •••         •••         •••         •••         •,.         ••«         ..«         .«•      ^^3 

2  13 


14  ILL  USTRA  TIONS. 

rAGi 

21. — John  Rusk  in,  1886.    From  a   Photograph   by  Bar- 

RAUD            195 

22. — Facsimile  of  Letter  by  John  Ruskin     201 

23.—                    „                              „                 205 

24.—                    „                              „                 209 


NoTB. — The  illustrations  are  here  published  by  special  permission  or  arrange- 
ment :  that  by  Sir  John  Millais,  by  courteous  permission  of  Sir  Henry  Acland,  the 
owner  of  the  copyright ;  and  the  page  of  Ruskin's  notebook,  and  the  drawing  oJ 
Rouen  Spire,  by  consent  of  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Arthur  Severn. 


JOHN  RUSKIN. 


INTRODUCTION. 

'Tis  well;  'tis  something;  we  may  stand 
Where  he  in  English  earth  is  laid, 
And  from  his  ashes  may  be  made 

The  violet  of  his  native  land. 

Come  then,  pure  hands,  and  bear  the  head 
That  sleeps,  or  wears  the  mask  of  sleep, 
And  come,  whatever  loves  to  weep, 

And  hear  the  ritual  of  the  dead. 

Since  Tennyson  died  no  greater  loss  has  been 
sustained  by  English  literature  in  the  memory 
of  the  present  generation  than  that  of  John 
Ruskin.  Of  all  men  who  have  dominated 
the  Art-world  of  Britain  during  the  nine- 
teenth century,  Ruskin  is  beyond  all  question 
and  beyond  all  comparison  the  greatest,  and, 
by  universal  admission,  the  most  individual  and 
most  interesting.  What  his  exact  position  as 
a  critic  and  preacher  of  Art  may  be,  what  his 
rank  as  a  scientist  or  a  leader  of  thought,  I 
make  no  pretence  here  of  determining.     But 

15 


l6  yOHN  RUSKIN. 

by  common  consent,  he  has  been  the  most  dis- 
tinguished figure  in  the  arena  of  Art-philosophy 
for  half-a-century  and  more,  the  philanthropist- 
miVitSint  par  excellence.  He  is  the  man  who  has 
admittedly  moulded  the  taste  of  the  public  to  a 
preponderating  extent  in  matters  aesthetic,  and, 
apart  from  his  labours  outside  the  pale  of  Art 
has  exerted  an  influence  so  powerful  that  he  has 
given  a  direction  to  the  practice  of  painting  and 
architecture  that  may  still  be  traced  in  some  of 
the  happiest  productions  of  the  day.  His  death 
has  given  reason  for  mourning  to  many;  no 
one  has  more  eloquently,  more  passionately, 
pleaded  the  cause  of  the  poor  than  Ruskin — no 
one  (except  it  be  perhaps  Mr.  Gladstone,  his 
political  bete  noire)  could  boast  so  vast  a  num- 
ber of  friends  amongst  the  great  mass  of  the 
public.  No  one  was  more  frequently  appealed 
to  for  advice,  nor  to  better  or  kindlier  pur- 
pose. None,  indeed,  has  loved  his  country 
better,  or  more  loyally  striven  to  serve  her. 
And,  in  the  general  regret,  few  will  be  found 
so  blind  or  rancorous  as  to  remember  aught 
but  the  conscientious  labours  of  his  life,  the 
nobility  of  his  sturdy  efforts,  and  the  sacrifices 
that  he  made  for  public  and  for  private  good. 


CHAPTER  I. 

HIS  LIFE. 

The  outline  of  his  life  is  briefly  this.  He 
was  born  in  London,  at  54,  Hunter  Street, 
Brunswick  Square,  on  February  8,  1819.  His 
father  (his  mother's  cousin)  was  a  Scotsman, 
bringing  his  "good  and  extremely  strong  will," 
as  the  son  tells  us,  into  the  firm  of  wine  mer- 
chants known  as  "  Ruskin,  Telford,  and 
Domecq  "  (agents  for  Peter  Domecq,  the  great 
sherry-grower  of  Xerez),  and  to  such  good 
purpose  that  he  speedily  became  a  successful 
and  a  wealthy  man.  John  Ruskin,  the  son, 
was  an  only  child,  and  for  several  years  he 
was  entirely  without  companions  of  his  own 
age,  with  hardly  an  amusement  or  boyish  joy, 
save  such  few  as  were  allowed  him  by  his 
austere  mother  and  austerer  aunt,  and  "accus- 
tomed to  no  other  prospect  than  that  of  the 
brick  walls  over  the  way."  Always  an  ex- 
tremely sensitive  and  nervous  child,  he  became 
studious,  thoughtful,  and  observant,  but  lively 
and  impressionable  withal ;  so  that  when  the 
"first  event  of  his  life"  took  place — no  less 
an  occasion  than  being  taken  by  his  eminently 

b  2*  17 


i8  JOHN  RUSK  IN. 

disagreeable  nurse  to  the  brow  of  Friar's  Craig, 
or  Derwentwater — the  intense  joy  and  awe  he 
felt  sank  so  deeply  into  his  soul  that  the  love 
of  landscape  became  henceforth  and  for  always 
his  prevailing  passion.  In  the  conduct  of  his 
business  Mr.  Ruskin  senior  was  constrained  to 
drive  throucrhout  the  lengrth  and  breadth  of 
England,  travelling  with  post-chaise  and  pair ; 
and  as  soon  as  his  son  was  old  enough  he 
carried  him  with  him  during  the  holidays,  and 
never  missed  showino-  to  him  all  the  beautiful 
views,  the  cathedrals,  castles,  ruins,  and  picture- 
galleries,  public  and  private,  near  which  their 
course  might  lay.  It  was  thus  that  the  boy's 
love  of  scenery  and  of  art  was  first  nurtured 
and  developed.  He  had  already  begun,  at 
the  age  of  eight,  to  sing  the  praises  of  land- 
scape in  precocious  verse ;  and  his  father — a 
highly  intellectual  and  cultivated  man,  and  no 
mean  artist  himself — gladly  recognised  his 
tendency,  and  encouraged  his  passion  by 
placing  him  for  instruction  under  J.  D.  Harding 
and  Copley  Fielding.  By  those  eminent  but 
somewhat  conventional  water-colour  painters — 
then  reckoned  amongst  the  best  teachers  of 
the  day — his  remarkable  executive  skill  was 
formed,  while  his  ordinary  education  he  re- 
ceived first  from  members  of  his  own  family, 
and  then  from  the  testy,  but  kind-hearted, 
Canon  Dale  and  other  private  tutors. 


JOili\    KL^K1N,   1822. 

FROM    THE    OIL    PAINTING    BY    JAMES    NORTHCOTE,  R.A. 

[By permission  of  Arthur  Severn,  Esq.,  R.I.) 

{^e,- />    /70. 


HIS  LIFE.  21 

It  was  in  1835,  ^^  the  age  of  sixteen,  that 
Ruskin  made  his  first  appearance  in  the  pubHc 
press  by  contributing  a  series  of  geological 
articles,  with  illustrations  by  himself,  to  the 
Magazine  of  Natural  History.  Later  on, 
under  the  pseudonym  of  "  Kata  Phusin " 
("According  to  Nature"),  he  printed  other 
papers  on  Art  and  Architecture  in  Loudon's 
Architectural  Magazine  which  in  1892  were 
republished  in  sumptuous  garb  under  the  title 
of  "The  Poetry  of  Architecture."  He  was 
but  eighteen  when  he  wrote  this  book.  In 
later  years  he  excused  the  anonymity  he  had 
preserved  in  respect  to  it  by  pleading  that 
the  public  would  hardly  have  felt  inclined 
to  accept  such  frank  dogmatism  from  one 
so  young.  When  I  reminded  Mr.  Burne- 
Jones  of  this  candid  excuse,  the  artist  re- 
plied with  smiling  surprise:  "When,  then, 
should  one  be  dogmatic  if  not  at  the  age  of 
eighteen  ?  " 

Having  entered  Christchurch,  Oxford,  as  a 
gentleman  commoner,  he  began  at  once  his 
friendship  with  his  contemporary  Dr.  (now  Sir 
Henry)  Acland — half-a-century  afterwards  the 
indirect  and  unoffending  cause,  I  believe,  of  his 
resignation  of  the  Slade  Professorship  at  the 
University.  From  Dr.  Buckland  he  acquired 
that  profound  geological  knowledge  which  has 


22  JOHN  RUSK  IN. 

always  been  one  of  the  mainstays  of  Ru skin's 
writings  on  Art  or  Science,  and  of  inestimable 
service  to  him  later,  whether  as  critic,  painter, 
lecturer,  or  disputant.  It  may  also  be  said  that 
to  Mr.  W.  H.  Harrison  Ruskin  owed  much  that 
was  not  inborn  of  the  elegance  and  purity  of 
his  literary  style  ;  just  as  from  the  Rev.  Osborne 
Gordon  he  acquired  the  greater  part  of  his 
general  scholarship.  In  1839  he  gained  the 
Newdigate  Prize,  with  his  poem  "  Salsette  and 
Elephanta,"  which  has  since  been  reprinted ; 
and  he  graduated  B.A.  in  1842.  It  was  in  that 
year  that  he  wrote  in  support  and  defence  of 
Turner,  who,  now  eight-and-sixty  years  of  age, 
old  and  alone,  slighted  and  misunderstood  by 
the  public,  was  being  savagely  written  down  by 
nearly  all  the  critics,  who  could  neither  appre- 
ciate his  beauties  nor  excuse  his  faults.  In 
1843,  when  twenty-four  years  old,  and  three 
years  after  his  introduction  to  Turner,  Ruskin 
expanded  this  explosion,  penned  "  in  the  height 
of  black  anger,"  into  what  is  known  as  the  first 
volume  of  "  Modern  Painters  :  By  a  Graduate 
of  Oxford."  This,  without  doubt,  was  the 
central  event  of  Ruskin's  life,  eventful  and 
contentious  as  it  has  ever  been. 

The  sensation  which  the  book  created  in 
artistic  circles  has  rarely  been  equalled  before 
or  since.     Its  reception  was  tremendous,  and 


^*u 

'4  #-- ^' 

r  ■' 

A 

JOHN    RISKIN,  1S24. 

("THE    THORN    IN    THE    P'OOT  ") 

FROM    AN    OIL    PAINTING    HY    JAMES    NORTHCOTE,  R.A. 

(By permission  of  Arthur  Severn,  Esq.,  JiJ.) 


{See  />.  172.) 


HIS  LIFE.  25 

the  violence  and  bitterness  with  which  the 
unknown  author  was  attacked  by  the  critics 
were  drowned  only  by  the  rapturous  storm  of 
applause  that  arose  from  the  Art-public  at 
large,  who  accepted  with  enthusiasm  the  bril- 
liance and  fire  of  his  writing,  and  the  force 
and  genius  of  his  powerful  reasoning.  The 
immediate  effect  of  the  work  was  to  establish 
Turner's  reputation,  firmly  and  for  ever,  as  the 
greatest  landscape-painter  the  world  has  ever 
seen,  and  his  own  as  perhaps  the  greatest  of 
modern  English  prose-writers.  Four  more 
volumes  completed  the  work,  but  the  last  was 
not  published  until  i860 — after  nearly  twenty 
years  of  laborious  preparation,  passed  in  inces- 
sant study  and  travelling,  mainly  in  Switzerland 
and  Italy,  had  been  devoted  to  the  task.  Mr. 
Hamerton,  in  his  "  Intellectual  Life,"  points 
out  with  truth  how,  in  common  with  the  Hum- 
boldts,  Ruskin  affords  a  striking  example  of  the 
value  of  wealth  to  an  intellectual  career.  Had 
it  not  been  for  his  material  prosperity,  all  his 
genius,  force  of  resolution  and  resistance  to 
every  temptation  to  indolence  would  not  have 
sufficed  to  enable  him  to  carry  through  the 
work  of  seventeen  years'  study  and  expensive 
preparation.  As  Mr.  Hamerton  says,  "  Modern 
Painters  "  is  not  merely  a  work  of  genius,  but 
of  genius  seconded  by  wealth. 


26  JOHN  RUSK  IN. 

In  the  meantime  he  had  been  busy  with 
other  writings.  In  1847  he  contributed  his 
first  review  to  the  Quarteidy — his  text  being 
Lord  Lindsay's  "  History  of  Christian  Art." 
Two  years  later — having  been  brought,  during 
his  preparation  of  "  Modern  Painters,"  to  turn 
his  attention  to  the  Queen  of  the  Arts — he 
published  his  "  Seven  Lamps  of  Architecture," 
in  which  he  sets  forth  the  theory  how  in  a 
nation's  dominant  style  of  architecture  may  be 
seen  reflected  its  life  and  manners,  and  even 
its  passions  and  its  religion.  Following  on  the 
lines  thus  laid  down,  Ruskin  proceeded,  in 
"The  Stones  of  Venice,"  issued  in  1851  and 
1853,  to  tell  the  history  of  the  rise  and  fall  of 
Venice,  as  illustrated  by  her  buildings,  and  to 
show  how  the  prosperity  and  art  of  a  nation 
are  synchronous  and  interdependent,  and  how 
the  purity  of  national  art  and  of  the  national 
conscience  and  morals  act  and  re-act  each  upon 
the  other. 

It  was  at  this  time,  while  Ruskin  was 
astonishing  the  world  with  his  originality  and 
startling  it  with  his  eager  sincerity,  that  the 
society  then  termed  and  since  known  as  the 
"  Pre-Raphaelite  Brotherhood "  sprang  into 
being.  A  brilliant  band  of  youthful  enthusiasts 
— comprising  John  Everett  Millais,  W.  Holman 
Hunt,  W.  M.  Rossetti,  Frederick  G.  Stephens, 


J=      .^ 


HIS  LIFE.  29 

James  Collinson,  Thomas  Woolner,  and  Dante 
Gabriel  Rossetti — combined  with  the  avowed 
object  of  founding  a  school  of  painting  of  which 
absolute  truth  to  nature  in  all  things,  especially 
in  respect  to  detail,  was  to  be  the  fundamental 
principle  ;  a  path  of  material  truth  from  which 
Raphael  was  held  to  have  been  the  first  to  stray, 
and  which,  by  a  sort  of  tacit  consent,  had  been 
untrodden  by  all  others  since  his  day.  An 
object  and  mission  so  worthy  were  precisely 
such  as  would  enlist  the  sympathies  and  fire 
the  generous  and  chivalrous  nature  of  Ruskin, 
encouraged  and  directed  as  he  was  by  the 
advice  of  Dyce.  He  straightway  threw  himself 
heart  and  soul  into  the  fray,  first  by  his 
celebrated  letter  to  the  Times,  and  afterwards 
by  his  "  Pre-Raphaelitism,"  and  other  writings, 
whereby  he  not  only  succeeded  in  securing  a 
fair  hearing  and  judgment  for  the  harassed  and 
persecuted  exponents  of  the  creed,  but  in 
educating  the  public  into  an  appreciation  of  their 
works.  He  came,  in  fact,  to  be  regarded  as 
the  prophet  of  the  school,  and  his  doughty 
championship  constitutes  one  of  the  stormiest 
passages  of  his  disputatious  life.  His  chief,  or 
most  obvious,  reward  was  the  ridicule  of  the 
world,  or  such  part  of  it  as  he  especially  ad- 
dressed himself  to.  The  general  sentiment 
aroused  was  fairly  reflected  by  the  well-known 


30  JOHN  RUSKIN. 

amusing  cartoon  by  Mr.  Frederick  Sandys — 
himself,  by  the  way,  by  no  means  out  of  sympathy 
with  the  teaching  of  the  school.  In  this  clever 
parody  of  Sir  John  Millais's  "  Sir  Isumbras  at 
the  Ford,"  which  was  then  the  sensation  of  the 
Academy,  Mr.  Sandys  humorously  represented 
Ruskin  as  the  ass  of  burden  of  the  P.-R.B,,  on 
whose  back  Millais,  Holman  Hunt,  and  Rossetti 
were  carried  across  the  stream  of  shallow 
waters. 

In  i860  Ruskin,  who  had  by  this  time 
become  a  power  in  the  land,  threw  himself 
into  a  new  crusade.  Truth,  purity  of  motive, 
and  honesty  of  execution,  which  he  had  so  long 
and  so  fervently  preached  as  essentials,  not  only 
to  the  highest,  but  to  all  sincere  art,  he  now 
came  to  consider  in  relation  to  social  science, 
and  he  began  a  series  of  papers  entitled  "  Unto 
this  Last,"  which  he  contributed  to  the  Cornhill 
Magazine.  Their  tendency  and  effect  may 
easily  be  imagined.  They  waged  war — with  all 
the  bitterness  and  all  the  torrentuous  eloquence 
of  a  prophet  of  old — against  the  whole  world 
of  commerce  and  its  methods,  and  assailed 
the  stronghold  of  the  political  economists 
with  the  fiery  vigour  of  which  John  Ruskin, 
in  these  latter  days,  has  almost  alone  been 
possessed.  His  principles  and  views,  however, 
being  based  upon  quite  the  highest  interpre- 


HIS  LIFE.  31 

tation  and  application  of  an  ethical  morality 
such  as  his  master,  Carlyle,  had  preached 
before  him,  were  rejected  with  anger  and  con- 
tempt by  the  commercial  community.  So 
strongly,  indeed,  did  they  resent  his  Utopian 
philosophy  that  the  editor  (who  at  that  time 
was  Thackeray),  fearful  for  the  fate  of  his  maga- 
zine, which  was  threatened  with  serious  injury 
by  the  publication  of  the  obnoxious  articles,  put 
a  summary  stoppage  to  their  further  issue.  It 
was,  however,  one  of  the  crowning  and  closing 
glories  of  Ruskin's  life — at  once  his  delight  and 
consolation — that  in  more  recent  times  thinkers 
have  come  to  accept  many  of  his  theories  and 
contentions  once  spurned  or  rejected,  and  the 
public  to  receive  them  as  truths. 

In  1865  and  1866  appeared  "Sesame  and 
Lilies  "  and  "  Crown  of  Wild  Olive,"  the  most 
popular  of  Ruskin's  books  in  England  and 
America  alike  (if  sales  may  be  taken  as  a 
criterion)  and,  perhaps,  his  masterpieces  of 
prose-writing.  In  1867  he  was  elected  Rede 
Lecturer  at  Cambridge,  with  the  honorary 
degree  of  LL.D.  ;  but  so  far  back  as  1853  he 
had  made  his  debut  as  a  lecturer,  when  he 
addressed  the  Edinburgh  students  on  "  Gothic 
Architecture."  Moreover  he,  with  Dante 
Gabriel  Rossetti  and  F.  D.  Maurice,  had  taken 
vast    interest    of    the    teaching    sort    in    the 


32  JOHN  RUSKIA. 

Working  Men's  College  in  1865.  In  1870 
he  was  appointed  Professor  of  Fine  Art  at 
Oxford,  to  the  chair  founded  in  the  previous 
year  by  Mr.  Felix  Slade.  He  was  at  Verona 
when  he  received  the  invitation,  and,  as  he 
himself  has  written,  *'  I  foolishly  accepted  it. 
My  simple  duty  at  that  time  was  to  have  stayed 
with  my  widowed  mother  at  Denmark  Hill" 
[his  father  had  died  in  1864],  "doing  whatever 
my  hand  found  to  do  there.  Mixed  vanity, 
hope  of  wider  usefulness,  and  partly  her  plea- 
sure in  my  being  at  Oxford  again,  took  me 
away  from  her  and  from  myself."  Mrs.  Ruskin 
dearly  loved  Oxford,  where  her  son  had 
spent  those  three  happy  years  at  college.  The 
professorship  he  continued  to  hold  until  1879, 
delivering  lectures  on  every  phase  of  Art — 
lectures  which  have  since  been  published — and 
only  resigned  his  post  when  he  discovered  that 
the  enthusiasm  and  constant  attendance  of  the 
students  were  due  rather  to  personal  attach- 
ment and  appreciation  of  his  original  and  force- 
ful way  of  putting  things,  than  to  real  interest 
in  the  subjects  upon  which  he  discoursed. 

Ruskin's  famous  periodical,  "  Fors  Clavi- 
gera  "  ("  Fortune,  the  Club-bearer  "),  was  begun 
in  1 87 1,  and  for  eight  years  was  devoted  to 
the  expositions  of  its  author's  views  upon  every- 
thing in  general,  written  with  a  nervous  energy 


HIS  LIFE.  33 

and  an  easy  familiarity  eminently  Ruskinian, 
strikingly  fresh  in  style  and  catholic  in  scope. 
It  was  in  its  pages  that  he  announced  his  inten- 
tion of  founding  the  *'St.  George's  Guild,"  first 
established  in  that  year — a  practical  attempt  to 
start  and  carry  on  a  land-owning  society  con- 
ducted on  the  principles  which  he  would  have 
all  landowners  to  adopt.  On  this  institution  he 
at  once  settled  ^^7,000,  and  a  London  freehold 
of  the  value  of  ^3,500  more,  and  of  all  this 
Miss  Octavia  Hill  was  appointed  manageress. 

In  this  same  "  Fors,"  on  July  2,  1877, 
appeared  the  author's  famous  criticism  of  Mr. 
Whistler  and  his  pictures,  then  being  exhibited 
at  the  Grosvenor  Gallery.  The  trial  has  even 
now  become  a  classic  ;  and  how  Mr.  Whistler 
delivered  his  smart  evidence  in  the  witness- 
box,  and  how  Ruskin — who  was  at  the 
time  confined  to  Brantwood  with  his  first  attack 
of  serious  illness — was  unable  to  defend  himself 
with  his  own  testimony,  and  was  made  to  pay 
his  prosecutor  one  farthing  for  the  rare  privi- 
lege of  saying  what  he  thought  of  him — are  to 
this  day  subjects  of  merry  conversation  where 
artists  and  lawyers  meet.  As  a  matter  of  fact, 
the  verdict,  which  left  each  litigant  to  pay  his 
own  costs,  made  no  call  whatever  on  the  purse 
of  Mr.  Ruskin.  The  amount  of  his  costs 
reached,  I  believe,  10^350,  or  thereabouts;  but  a 


34  JOHN  RUSK  IN. 

group  of  devoted  admirers  at  once  subscribed  the 
amount,  even  to  the  last  farthing — Mr.  Whist- 
ler's farthing — and  the  sum  was  paid  forthwith. 
But  Mr.  Ruskin  never  knew  to  the  last  to  what 
the  amount  of  the  cost  attained,  nor  the  names 
of  any  of  his  enthusiastic  friends,  save  that 
of  Mrs.  Talbot,  of  Barmouth.  To  the  end 
he  was  not  satisfied  with  his  nominal  defeat. 
"I  am  blamed  by  my  prudent  acquaintances 
for  being  too  personal,"  said  he;  "but 
truly  I  find  vaguely  objurgatory  language 
generally  a  mere  form  of  what  Plato  calls 
*  shadow-fight.'  "  Similarly,  when  in  conver- 
sation with  him  on  one  occasion  I  touched 
upon  the  subject,  he  quietly  avoided  it,  saying, 
"  I  am  afraid  of  a  libel-action  if  I  open  my 
mouth,  and  if  I  can't  say  what  I  like  about  a 
person,  I  prefer  to  say  nothing  at  all." 

By  this  time  Mr.  Ruskin's  disciples  and 
admirers,  who,  acknowledged  **  Ruskinites," 
were  now  to  be  counted  by  thousands,  rightly 
perceived  that  if  their  Master's  doctrines,  social 
and  artistic,  were  to  bear  good  fruit,  it  would 
be  necessary  that  some  sort  of  organisation 
should  be  formed  for  the  dissemination  of  his 
writings,  the  indexing  of  his  works,  and  the 
carrying  of  his  theories  into  practical  effect. 
The  result  was  the  beginning  of  the  foundation 
of   the    "Ruskin    Societies    of   the    Rose,"    in 


Q 

O 

^  d 

8  ^ 

■—I  <i 


■^. 


HIS  LIFE.  37 

1879,  in  London,  Manchester,  Sheffield,  Glas- 
gow, Aberdeen,  Birmingham,  and  other  centres 
— bodies  now  collectively  known  as  "The  Ruskin 
Society,"  which  have  sought  and  obtained 
vitality  by  dealing  generally  with  poetry  and 
art,  education,  morals,  ethics,  and  all  such 
other  subjects  as  the  Ruskinian  philosophy  has 
pronounced  upon,  apart  from  the  narrower  or 
more  defined  teachings  of  Mr.  Ruskin  himself. 
These  affiliated  societies  are  all  of  them  in 
active  existence. 

After  presenting  many  valuable  gifts,  artistic 
and  mineralogical,  to  various  institutions,  en- 
dowing the  Taylorian  Galleries  at  Oxford  with 
a  school,  furnishing  it  with  exquisite  works 
of  art  as  copies,  and  making  rich  presents 
besides  to  the  University,  as  well  as  to 
Cambridge  and  to  the  British  Museum 
(whose  collection  of  Silicas  he  catalogued)  and 
rendering  many  other  public  services  of  a 
kindred  nature,  Mr.  Ruskin  crowned  his  work 
in  this  direction  by  the  establishment  and  stock- 
ing of  the  St.  George's  Museum  at  Walkley, 
near  Sheffield.  He  chose  this  spot  because  it 
was  situated  on  the  summit  of  a  steep  and 
toilsome  hill,  which,  he  hoped,  the  workers  of 
Sheffield  might  understand  to  typify  the  ascent 
of  the  artistic  path  that  none  but  earnest 
workers  need  care  to  face.     But  the  hill  proved 


38  JOHN  RUSK  IN. 

to  be  too  generally  and  too  successfully  de- 
terrent; and  the  removal  of  the  reorganised 
museum  to  the  fine  old  Georgian  mansion  of 
Meersbrook  Park  took  place  in  1890,  when  it 
was  opened  by  the  Earl  of  Carlisle.  This 
beautiful  museum,  placed  by  deed  under  the  joint 
control  and  managfement  of  the  Trustees  of  the 
St.  George's  Guild  and  of  the  Corporation, 
contains  a  large  collection  of  works  of  fine 
art,  rare  and  exquisite  books,  Venetian  casts, 
missals,  splendid  examples  from  his  collection 
of  mineralogy  and  natural  history — all  selected 
with  thorough  knowledge  and  purposeful  care 
by  "The  Master  "  himself.  And  Ruskin  House, 
Walkley,  was  in  1893  turned  into  a  Girls' 
Training  Home,  with  the  hearty  approval  and 
cordial  wishes  of  Ruskin. 

But  by  this  time  his  course  was  nearly 
run.  He  resigned  the  Slade  Professorship,  to 
which  he  had  been  re-elected  in  1876,  when  a 
passing  but  distressing  attack  of  brain-dis- 
turbance warned  him  that  he  was  straining  too 
far  his  powers  of  endurance  by  the  multiplicity 
and  arduousness  of  his  labours.  In  1884,  when 
he  was  engaged  in  delivering  another  series  of 
lectures  at  Oxford,  he  found  it  necessary  to 
cease  their  public  delivery,  and  to  confine  them 
to  students — for  the  rush  of  the  outside  world 
to  listen  to  the  lecturer,  no  less  than  the  wide 


HIS  LIFE.  39 

range  of  subject  and  method  of  dealing  with 
it  adopted  by  him — acted  upon  the  Universit)' 
authorities  as  an  electric  shock.  The  final  split 
soon  came ;  the  Professor,  it  was  thought,  was 
about  to  assail  in  his  next  lecture  what  he 
considered  to  be  the  vivisectionlst  tendencies 
of  the  University.  Pressure  was  brought  to 
bear  upon  him  to  '*  postpone "  the  lecture, 
which,  in  fact,  he  did.  Ruskin  then  asked 
the  University  for  a  grant  to  permit  of  the 
better  arrangement  of  the  Art  Section  under 
his  care.  It  was  declined,  on  the  ground  of 
the  University  being  in  debt,  but  a  few  days 
later  a  vote  was  passed  "  endowing  vivisection 
in  the  University,"  and  on  the  following  Sunday 
Mr.  Ruskin's  resignation  was  in  the  Vice- 
Chancellor's  hands. 

The  facts  connected  with  the  matter,  it 
may  be  said,  appear  to  have  been  strangely 
burked.  Since  that  time  Mr.  Ruskin  retired 
from  personal  contact  with  the  public,  although 
for  a  time  his  pen  was  still  busy,  and  the  press 
gave  forth  more  than  one  volume  of  his  earlier, 
as  well  as  of  his  later,  writings.  But  his  first 
attack  of  illness  was  succeeded  by  others,  under 
which  he  gradually,  but  yet  more  peacefully, 
sank,  until  there  came  the  end  which  robbed 
England  of  one  of  her  greatest  men,  and,  so  to 
speak,  cast  the  better  part  of  her  into  mourning. 


CHAPTER  II. 

CHARACTER,    HEALTH,   AND   TEMPERAMENT. 

It  is  impossible  to  form  any  accurate  esti- 
mate of  the  literary  work  of  Ruskin,  or  of  the 
worth  of  the  man  himself  and  his  acts,  without 
taking  his  character  and  temper,  as  influenced 
by  his  health,  largely  into  account.  This,  of 
course,  is  in  a  measure  true  of  all  men.  But 
with  one  possessed  of  an  organisation  so  com- 
plex and  delicate  as  that  of  Ruskin,  such 
knowledge  and  careful  judgment  are  absolutely 
necessary,  for  they  afford  the  clue  to  many 
apparent  inconsistencies. 

The  conditions  of  his  rearing  all  tended  to 
foster  self-conceit  in  the  lad  ;  and  the  wonder  is 
that,  being  as  clever  as  he  was,  and  finding  him- 
self the  object  of  constant  applause  from  admir- 
ing friends,  of  the  worship  of  parents,  and  the 
approval  of  some  of  the  first  intellects  of  the 
day — the  wonder  is,  in  truth,  that  he  was  so 
little  of  a  prig.  But  his  severe  Bible  teaching, 
the  oft-repeated  assurance  that  he  was  to  become 
a  preacher,  and  an  eminent  one,  too,  predisposed 
him,  perhaps,  towards  the  early  idea  of  being 
40 


CHARACTER,  HEALTH,  AND    TEMPERAMENT.    41 

appointed  to  be  unto  the  public  as  a  missionary, 
and  later,  as  an  oracle  and  a  seer.  But  many 
of  his  most  admirable  qualities  barred  the  way 
to  his  complete  success  in  these  characters,  and 
made  him  feel,  to  his  intense  and  abiding  dis- 
appointment in  his  later  years,  that  he  was  a 
very  Cassandra  among  the  prophets.  "  All  my 
life,"  he  declared  in  my  hearing  some  years  ago, 
"  all  my  life  I  have  been  talking  to  the  people, 
and  they  have  listened,  not  to  what  I  say,  but  to 
how  I  say  it;  they  have  cared  not  for  the  matter, 
but  only  for  the  manner  of  my  words.  And  so  I 
have  made  people  go  wrong  in  a  hundred  ways, 
and  they  have  done  nothing  at  all.  I  am  not," 
he  added  bitterly,  "  an  art-teacher ;  they  have 
picked  up  a  few  things  from  me,  but  I  find  I 
have  been  talking  too  much  and  doing  too 
little,  and  so  have  been  unable  to  form  a  school ; 
and  people  have  not  been  able  to  carry  out 
what  I  say,  because  they  do  not  understand 
it." 

If  we  had  to  define  the  main  characteristics 
of  Ruskin's  mind,  "  and  the  keys  to  the  secret 
of  all  he  said  or  did,"  I  think  we  could  hardly 
do  better  than  repeat  the  analysis  he  made  of 
Turner's ;  "  Uprightness,  generosity,  extreme 
tenderness  of  heart,  sensuality,  excessive  ob- 
stinacy, irritability,  infidelity  ;  "  and,  we  should 
have  to  add,  "  impulsiveness,  violent  prejudice, 

4* 


42  JOHN  RUSK  IN. 

kindliest  sympathy,  and  profound  piety."  But 
impulsiveness,  and  its  offspring — prejudice — 
were  at  the  root  of  too  many  of  his  acts  and  his 
hastier  judgments.  He  was  supposed  to  hate 
Jews  on  principle,  not  from  religious  motives, 
but  simply  because  some  of  the  lowest  and  most 
contemptible  of  them  practised  the  usury  that 
persecution  had  forced  upon  them  ;  he  despised 
all  bishops,  because  some  of  them  died  rich. 
No  one  really  deserves  hanging,  he  says  some- 
where, save  bankers  and  bishops.  Perhaps  this 
was  written  at  the  time  of  his  famous  duel  with 
the  late  Bishop  of  Manchester  on  the  subject  of 
usury,  when  his  indignation  was  aroused  by 
what  he  imagined  was  the  lukewarmness  of  his 
antagonist.  Yet  in  no  man's  company  did  he 
more  rejoice  than  in  that  of  Dr.  Harvey  Good- 
win, Bishop  of  Carlisle,  whom  he  entertained 
at  Brantwood  more  than  once,  and  whom  he 
loved  and  esteemed  as  he  loved  few  others. 
But  all  his  prejudice  is  to  be  traced  to  exces- 
sive generosity — a  fact  which,  with  all  his 
love  of  paradox,  he  never  would  recognise 
himself. 

It  is  not  a  little  surprising,  seeing  how 
delicate  and  troubled  he  was  in  general  health, 
and  how  numerous  and  actively  bitter  were  his 
adversaries,  that  the  engaging  sweetness  of  his 
character  was  so  often  uppermost.    His  natural 


CHARACTER,  HEALTH,  AND    TEMPERAMENT.    43 

gentleness  was  proof  against  the  trying  circum- 
stances of  his  early  education.  At  Oxford,  as 
he  himself  tells  us,  "  I  could  take  any  quantity 
of  jests,  though  I  could  not  make  one,"  even 
to  the  point  of  seeing  with  good-humour  the 
fruit  he  had  sent  for  from  London  thrown 
out  of  the  window  to  the  porter's  children.  No 
man  ever  smiled  more  agreeably  in  his  greet- 
ing ;  no  man's  eyes  ever  looked  more  kindly 
into  yours.  Having  nothing  to  conceal,  he  was 
frank,  even  to  a  fault,  making  no  attempt 
to  hide  his  little  amiable  weaknesses  and  venial 
defects. 

"I  like  Wilson  Barrett,"  he  said  one  day, 
when  discussing  the  drama  ;  "  he  flatters  me  so 
deliciously  and  in  such  tactful  taste  " — an  ad- 
mission, by  the  way,  confirmed  long  before  in 
a  letter  of  instructions  to  his  private  secretary, 
written  from  abroad : — "  Send  me  as  little  as 
you  possibly  can.  Tie  up  the  knocker — say 
I'm  sick — I'm  dead  (flattering  and  love-letters, 
please,  in  any  attainable  quantity.  Nothing 
else)."  Love-letters!  how  many  did  he  not 
write  and  delight  in  receiving — platonic  for  the 
most  part,  perhaps  for  the  whole,  but  the 
brightest,  quaintest,  most  humorous,  merriest 
love-letters  imaginable !  For  the  respect,  the 
veneration,  and  admiration  he  entertained  for 
the  bemc  sexe  as  a  whole — as  an  institution,  as 


44  JOHN  RUSK  IN. 

Artemus  Ward  calls  it — were  intensified,  were 
all  focussed,  indeed,  on  young,  pretty,  and  in- 
nocent femininity.  Humour  bubbles  over  the 
pages  of  many  of  his  books  and  letters,  but  it 
is  never  quite  so  sly  and  quite  so  happy  as 
when  charming,  modest,  and  lively  girls  are  the 
subject  or  the  object  of  them  ;  and  I  have  heard 
a  score  of  anecdotes  of  the  pretty  thraldom 
under  which  he  has  suffered  beneath  their  yoke, 
and  the  not  unwelcome  tricks  that  have  oft 
been  played  upon  him.  I  have  said  that  his 
amorous  sport  was  entirely  platonic ;  it  was 
more  than  that,  it  was  essentially  paternal : 
and  usually  ended  in  his  presenting  to  his 
charmer,  or  tormentor,  some  dainty  gift,  with 
a  playful  grace  that  was  altogether  peculiar  to 
himself. 

Herein  I  am  breaking  no  confidences,  for 
has  he  not  told  us  all  about  it  a  score  of 
pleasant  times?  "My  pets" — his  adopted 
daughter,  Mrs.  Arthur  Severn  (his  veritable 
"Angel  in  the  house")  and  Miss  Hilliard,  now 
Mrs.  W.  H.  Churchill — are  familiar,  through 
his  books,  to  all  good  Ruskinites.  He  speaks 
of  them  often  enough  in  "  Fors,"  and  of  others 
too :  "  First,  those  two  lovely  ladies  who  were 
studying  the  Myosotis  palustris  with  me ;  yes, 
and,  by  the  way,  a  little  beauty  from  Cheshire, 
who  came  in  afterwards ;  and  then  that  charm- 


CHARACTER,  HEALTH,  AND    TEMPERAMENT.    45 

ing  (I  didn't  say  she  was  charming,  but  she 
was  and  is)  lady  whom  I  had  charge  of  at 
Furness  Abbey,  and  her  two  daughters,  and 
those  three  beautiful  girls  who  tormented  me 
so  on  the  23rd  of  May,  1875,  and  another  who 
greatly  disturbed  my  mind  at  church  only  a 
Sunday  or  two  ago  with  the  sweetest  little 
white  straw  bonnet  I  have  ever  seen,  only 
letting  a  lock  or  two  escape  of  the  curliest 
hair ;  so  that  I  was  fain  to  make  her  a  present 
of  a  Prayer-book  afterwards,  advising  her  that 
her  tiny  ivory  one  was  too  coquettish  ;  and  my 
own  pet  cousin ;  and  I  might  name  more,  but 
leave  their  accusation  to  their  consciences." 
On  another  occasion,  speaking  of  his  garden 
and  house  at  Denmark  Hill,  he  says :  "  The 
camelias  and  azaleas  stand  in  the  ante-room  of 
my  library ;  and  everybody  says,  when  they 
come  in,  *  How  pretty ! '  and  my  young  lady 
friends  have  leave  to  gather  what  they  like  to 
put  in  their  hair  when  they  are  going  to  balls." 
He  himself  once  admitted  that  when  he  fell 
in  love  in  a  "mildly  confidential  way" — 
"according  to  my  usual  manner  of  paying 
court  to  my  mistresses,  I  wrote  an  essay  for 
her,  nine  foolscap  pages  long,  on  the  rela- 
tive dignity  of  music  and  painting  !  "  Many 
will  remember  with  how  much  enthusiasm 
Charles    Dickens,    thirty    or    forty   years   ago, 


46  JOHN  RUSK  IN. 

endorsed  in  All  the  Year  Round  what 
Ruskin  had  to  say  of  "the  beauties  of  the 
maids  of  merry  England,"  and  the  artistic 
grace  of  their  then  fashionable  attire.  Even 
when  combating  an  obnoxious  theory,  he 
would  sometimes  revert  to  pretty  womanhood 
for  an  illustration,  as  when,  in  animadverting 
on  the  Darwinian  doctrine  of  the  Descent  of 
Man  as  mischievous  (in  looking  rather  to  the 
growth  of  the  flesh  than  to  the  breath  of  the 
spirit),  he  says:  "The  loss  of  mere  happiness 
in  such  modes  of  thought  is  incalculable. 
When  I  see  a  girl  dance,  I  thank  Heaven 
that  made  her  cheerful  as  well  as  graceful, 
and  envy  neither  the  science  nor  sentiment 
of  my  Darwinian  friend,  who  sees  in  her  only 
a  cross  between  a  dodo  and  a  daddy-long- 
legs." And  again,  when  contesting  the  idea 
that  a  knowledge  of  anatomy  is  essential  for 
painters,  he  writes  to  Monsieur  Chesneau : 
"Will  you  please  ask  the  next  lover  you 
meet  how  far  he  thinks  the  beauty  of  his 
mistress's  fore-arm  depends  on  the  double 
bones  in  it,  and  of  her  humerus  on  the  sinele 
one  ?  "  Nay,  one  would  swear  that  his  "  litde 
Susie" — one  of  the  sister  ladies  of  Thwaite, 
to  whom  he  wrote  the  delightful  letters  which 
have  since  been  published  under  the  title  of 
*'  Hortus  Inclusus  " — must  have  been  at  once 


f^-^. 


,',^.^£. 


^ 


^- 


CiQtih 


X'II7'^  J5C, 


JOHN    RUSKLX,  1S42. 

FROM    THE   WATER   COLOUR    BY   GEORGE    RICHMOND,  K.A. 
{By  permission  of  Arthur  Severn,  Esq.,  J?. I.) 


{See  />.  174.) 


CHARACTER,  HEALTH,  AND    TEMPERAMENT.    49 

pretty  and  graceful,  were  one  to  judge  alone  by 
the  tone  adopted  in  the  letters  he  wrote  her. 
But,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  Miss  Susannah  Beever 
— his  neighbour  in  Coniston  village,  living  in 
a  house  on  an  eminence  looking  over  the  lake- 
head — was  a  few  years  his  senior,  and  was 
seventy  years  of  age  at  least  when  Ruskin 
first  knew  her.  To  the  end  of  her  long  life 
this  clever  lady  was  surprisingly  young,  and  so 
bright  and  cheerful  and  sweet  and  charming, 
that  she  fully  deserved  the  daily  letters  that 
the  Master  of  Brantwood  sent  her.  She  had, 
indeed,  discovered  for  herself  the  art  of  growing 
old  beautifully,  and  she  reaped  the  reward  by 
completely  enslaving  the  intellectual  affections 
of  her  ageing  friend. 

But  his  love  for  pretty  girls  in  no  way 
lessened  his  love  for  children — a  passion 
which  inspired  some  of  the  most  pathetic 
and  beautiful  passages  that  have  issued  from 
his  pen.  This  tendency,  together  with  his 
cordial  and  courteous  old-fashioned  hospitality 
and  his  overflowing  charity,  combined  to  form 
the  bright  side  of  his  character — a  side  so 
bright  that  on  the  other  there  is  none  of  his 
shortcominors  but  is  thrown  into  shadow  and 
belittled  in  its  brilliancy.  He  has  chosen  to 
refer  to  his  nature  as  "a  worker's  and  a 
miser's    .    .    .   though    I    love    giving,    yet    my 


5©  JOHN  RUSK  IN. 

notion  is  not  at  all  dividing  my  last  crust  with 
a  beggar,  but  riding  through  a  town  like  a 
Commander  of  the  Faithful,  having  any  quantity 
of  sequins  and  ducats  in  saddle-bags,  and  throw- 
ing them  around  in  radiant  showers  and  hailing 
handfuls ;  with  more  bags  to  brace  on  when 
those  were  empty."  But  herein  he  did  himself, 
as  he  often  did,  gross  injustice,  for  I  have 
ample  documentary  evidence  in  my  possession 
that  he  delighted  in  nothing  more — and  almost 
daily  gave  rein  to  his  delight — than  giving, 
secretly,  tactfully,  and  with  kindliest  judg- 
ment. 

It  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  the  record 
of  his  benefactions  and  almsgiving  would  fill  a 
volume.  How  when  his  father  died  he  gave 
forthwith  to  those  relations  who,  he  thought,  had 
been  forgotten  in  the  will,  the  sum  of  ;^i  7,000, 
and  to  a  cousin  advanced  another  ^15,000,  a 
debt  he  promptly  wiped  off — "  which  hereby 
my  cousin  will  please  observe  is  very  heartily 
done ;  and  he  is  to  be  my  cousin  as  he  used 
to  be,  without  any  more  thought  of  it" — 
has  ere  now  been  made  public.  But  his 
thousand -and -one  kindnesses — now  acts  of 
grace  and  delicacy,  now  of  substantial  help 
and  rescue — have  never  reached  the  ken  of 
the  public  save  by  the  confession  of  the 
recipients.     A  few  extracts  from  his  letters  to 


CHARACTER,  HEALTH,  AND    TEMPERAMENT.     51 

his  secretary  during  the  year  1866  may  give 
some  idea  of  the  extent  and  number  of  his 
kindly  deeds,  and  of  his  solicitude  and  warmth 
of  heart,  though  they  give  little  clue  to  the  times 
out  of  number  on  which  the  gentle  Samaritan 
was  victimised — the  usual  fate  of  the  philan- 
thropist who  prides  himself,  beyond  any  other 
quality,  on  his  worldly  shrewdness  and  his 
knowledge  of  life  and  character. 

On  Februar}'  22nd  he  writes  with  some 
show  of  mystery — 

**  Here's  something,  please,  I  want  done  very  mucli. 
Will  you  please  go  to  the  Crystal  Palace  to-morrow  or 
the  day  after,  which  is  the  last  day,  but  to-morrow  better, 
and,  if  it  is  not  sold,  buy  the  lizard  canary  {J[,\)  No.  282, 
page  17  of  catalogue,  in  any  name  you  like — not  mine,  nor 
yours — and  give  the  bird  to  anybody  who  you  think  will 
take  care  of  it,  and  I'll  give  you  the  price  when  I  see  you 
— which  must  be  soon." 

To  this  canary,  which  was  duly  bought, 
there  evidently  hung  a  tale,  for  it  formed  the 
subject  of  many  subsequent  references  and 
anxious  directions. 

On  the  5th  of  March  he  wrote — 

"Did  Ned  speak  to  you  about  an  Irish  boy  whom  I 
want  to  get  boarded  and  lodged,  and  put  to  some  art 
schooling — and  I  don't  know  how?  " 

Three  days  afterwards  he  proceeded — 

*  Thanks  for  note  about  the  boy,  and  infinite  thanks 
for  kindest  offer.     But  I've  no  notion  of  doing  as  much 


52  JOHN  RUSK  IN. 

as  this  for  him.  All  I  want  is  a  decent  lodging — he  is 
now  a  shop-boy.  I  only  want  a  bit  of  a  garret  in  a 
decent  house,  and  means  of  getting  him  into  some  school 
of  art.  I  fancy  Kensington  best — and  you  should  look 
after  him  morally  and  I  artistically." 

On  the  27th  the  boy  from  Ireland  was  duly 
settled  on  Riiskin's  charity,  and  on  the  same 
date  beoran  the  arrangfement  which  ended  in 
a  gift  of  a  hundred  pounds  to  George  Cruik- 
shank.  Then  ensued  a  prolonged  visit  to  the 
Continent,  on  the  conclusion  of  which  there 
came  a  new  request  for  almoner's  duty  : — 

"The  enclosed  is  from  a  funny,  rather  nice,  half- 
crazy  old  French  lady  (guessing  at  her  from  her  letters), 
and  I  have  a  curiosity  to  know  what  kind  of  a  being  it  is. 
Would  you  kindly  call  on  her  to  ask  for  further  information 
about  the  '  predicament,'  and,  if  you  think  it  at  all  curable 
or  transit-able,  I'll  advance  her  20  pounds  without  interest. 
I've  only  told  her  you  will  call  to  *  inquire  into  the 
circumstances  of  the  case.'  " 

Although  he  complained  that  he  "  can't 
understand  the  dear  old  lady's  letters,"  Ruskin 
decided — of  course — to  come  to  her  help, 
charged  his  secretary  to  "  look  after "  her  a 
little,  and  added,  "I  shouldn't  mind  placing 
the  over-charge  sum  at  her  bankers,  besides." 

"Also  look  over  the  enclosed  form  from  .     I'm 

very  sorry  about  this  man — anything  more  wretched  than 
the  whole  business  can't  be.  He'll  never  paint,  and  how 
to  keep  him  from  starvation  and  madness  I  can't  see.     I 


CHARACTER,  HEALTH,  AND    TEMPERAMENT.     53 

can't  keep  every  unhappy  creature  who  mistakes  his  voca- 
tion. What  can  I  do?  I've  rather  a  mind  to  send  him 
this  fifty  pounds,  which  would  be  the  simplest  way  to  me 
of  getting  quit  of  him — but  I  can't  get  quit  of  the 
thought  of  him.  Is  his  wife  nice,  do  you  know — or  if  you 
don't,  would  you  kindly  go  and  see  ?  I've  written  to  him 
to  write  to  you,  or  to  explain  things  to  you,  if  you  call. 

wrote  to  me  in  a  worry  for  money  the  day  before 

yesterday.  I  wrote  I  couldn't  help  him.  All  the  earlier 
part  of  this  week  an  old  friend  of  my  father's — a  staff-writer 
on  the  Times — was  bothering  and  sending  his  wife  out  here 
in  cabs  in  the  rain,  to  lend  him  ;^8oo,  on  no  security  to 
speak  of,  and  yesterday  comes  a  letter  from  Edinburgh 
saying  that  my  old  friend  Dr.  John  Brown  is  gone  mad — 
owing  to,  among  other  matters,  pecuniary  affairs  (after  a 
whole  life  of  goodness  and  usefulness)." 

Three  days  afterwards  he  put  his  foot  down 
— temporarily. 

"Tell it's  absolutely  no  use  his  trying  to  see  me 

(I  don't  even  see  my  best  friends  at  present,  as  you  know), 
and  nothing  is  of  the  least  influence  with  me  but  plain 
facts,  plainly  told,  and  right  conduct  " 

— a  declaration  that  would  have  called  a  smile 
to    the   lips   of   many   of    the    impostors   who 
squeezed,  before  and  since,  the  soft  heart  of  the 
too  sympathetic  and  charitable  professor. 
On  the  14th  of  September  Ruskin  wrote — 

"That  boy's  sketches  are  marvellous.     I  should  like  to 
see  him  and  be  of  any  use  I  could  to  him," 

and  immediately  followed  it  by  another  scheme 
of  charity. 


<;4  JOHN  RUSK  IN. 

"  Please  just  look  over  enclosed,"  he  wrote,  '*  and  see  if 
any  little  good  can  or  ought  to  be  done.  I  want  you  to  go  to 
Boulogne  for  me  to  see  after  the  widow  of  a  pilot  who  died 
at  Folkestone  of  cholera.  They  were  dear  friends  of  mine, 
both  as  good  as  gold — she  now  quite  desolate.  When  could 
you  go,  taking  your  cousin  with  you,  if  you  like,  for  a  few 
days  ?  You  would  be  well  treated  at  the  Hotel  des  Bains. 
I'll  come  over  to-morrow  and  tell  you  about  it. 

"  I  don't  think  it  will  be  necessary,"  he  continued,  a  day 
or  two  later,  "  for  you  to  stay  at  Boulogne  longer  than  the 
enclosed  will  carry  you.  It  is  more  as  a  bearer  of  the 
expression  of  my  sympathy  that  I  ask  you  to  go  than  to 
do  much.  The  poor  woman  ought  to  be  able  to  manage 
well  enough  with  her  one  child,  if  she  lives,  and  I  doubt 
not  she  will  do  all  she  ought — but  at  present  she  is  stunned, 
and  it  will  do  her  good  to  have  you  to  speak  to." 

A  few  days  afterwards  another  matter  was 
forced  on  his  attention. 

"This   business   is    serious"    [the    next    letter    ran]. 

"Write  to  Miss that  I  do  not  choose  at  present  to 

take  any  notice  of  it,  else  the  creditor  would  endeavour 
to  implicate  me  in  it  at  once,  if  there  was  the  least  ap- 
pearance of  my  having  been  acquainted  with  the  transac- 
tion— and  I  don't  at  all  intend  to  lose  money  by  force, 
whatever  I  may  do  for  my  poor  friend  when  she  is  quit  of 
lawyers." 

Once  more  Ruskin  lost  patience  at  the 
unreasonable  demands  to  which  he  was  sub- 
jected, and  on  the  9th  of  November  he  wrote — 

"All  that  you  have  done  is  nice  and  right — but  I  am 
sorry  to  see  that  you  are  yourself  over-worked.     Also,  I 


CHARACTER,  HEALTH,  AND    TEMPERAMENT.     55 

will  take  some  measures  to  relieve  you  of  this  nuisance  by 
writing  a  letter  somewhere  on  modern  destitution  in  the 
middle  classes.  I  hope  to  be  able  to  do  this  more  effec- 
tively towards  the  beginning  of  the  year,  and  to  state  that 
for  the  present  I  must  retire  from  the  position  necessarily 
now  occupied  by  a  publicly  recognised  benevolent — or 
simple— person.  .  .  I  simply  have  at  present  no  more 
money — and  therefore  am  unable  to  help — in  fact,  I  am  a 
long  way  within  of  my  proper  banker's  balance — and  I 
don't  choose  at  present  to  sell  out  stock  and  diminish  my 
future  power  of  usefulness. 

"I  think  I  shall  do  most  ultimate  good  by  distinctly 
serviceable  appropriation  of  funds,  not  by  saving  here  and 
there  an  unhappy  soul — I  wish  I  could — when  I  hear  of 
them — as  you  well  know.  I  am  at  the  end  of  my  means 
just  now,  and  that's  all  about  it." 

Wherewith  he  at  once  made  a  further  orlft  of  a 
hundred  pounds,  "as  I  said  I  would."  Such  is 
the  record  of  a  few  months  of  a  single  year  taken 
at  random ;  and  it  may  fairly  be  assumed  that 
one  year  much  resembled  another  in  the  cycle 
of  the  Ruskinian  doctrine  of  Faith,  Hope,  and, 
above  all,  Charity. 

In  his  taste  for  amusement  Mr.  Ruskin 
was  always  simple.  Almost  to  the  last  he 
retained  his  love  for  the  theatre,  and  was  an 
admirable  critic  of  a  play.  "  Now  that  I  am 
getting  old,"  he  told  me,  "and  can  climb  the 
hills  no  longer,  my  chief  pleasure  is  to  go  to 
the  theatre.  Just  as  I  can  always  enjoy 
Prout,  even  when  I  sometimes  tire  of  Turner, 


56  JOHN  RUSK  IN. 

SO  one  of  the  only  pleasures  in  my  life  en- 
tirely undiminished  is  to  see  a  good  actor 
and  a  good  play.  I  was  immensely  pleased 
with  Claudian  and  Mr.  Wilson  Barrett's  act- 
ing of  it."  [It  was  during  the  run  of  that 
play  that  this  conversation  took  place.]  '•  In- 
deed, I  admired  it  so  much  that  I  went  to 
see  it  three  times  from  pure  enjoyment  of  it, 
although  as  a  rule  I  cannot  sit  out  a  tragic 
play.  It  is  not  only  that  it  is  the  most 
beautifully  mounted  piece  I  ever  saw,  but  it 
is  that  every  feeling  that  is  expressed  in  the 
play,  and  every  law  of  morality  that  is  taught 
in  it,  is  entirely  right.  I  call  that  charming 
little  play  of  School  entirely  immoral,  be- 
cause the  teaching  of  it  is  that  a  man  should 
swagger  about  in  knickerbockers,  shoot  a  bull, 
and  marry  an  heiress.  Now,  as  for  the  litera- 
ture of  modern  plays,  I  think  that  in  comedies 
the  language  is  often  very  precious  and 
piquant — more  so  in  French  than  in  English 
pieces ;  but  I  know  of  no  tragedy,  French 
or  English,  whose  language  satisfies  me." 
And  he  added  that  he  was  a  critical  admirer, 
too,  with  reservations,  of  Miss  Mary  Anderson 
— "  a  sweet  lady  and  an  excellent  person — but 
not,  I  think,  a  great  actress." 

In    fine   weather,    when    he   did    not    roam 
about    the    moors    and     hills     that    overlook 


CHARACTER,  HEALTH,  AND   TEMPERAMENT.     57 

Coniston  Lake,  he  loved  to  cut  brushwood 
that  grew  in  the  wood  behind  his  house ; 
and  in  bad,  when  not  reading,  or  drawing, 
or  examining-  his  fossils  or  other  treasures, 
he  would  revel  in  a  game  of  chess.  He  was 
an  excellent  player,  and  at  one  time  talked 
of  "publishing  a  selection  of  favourite  old 
games  by  players  of  genius  and  imagination, 
as  opposed  to  the  stupidity  called  chess- 
playing  in  modern  days.  Pleasant  play,  truly  ! 
in  which  the  opponents  sit  calculating  and 
analysing  for  twelve  hours,  tire  each  other 
nearly  into  apoplexy  or  idiocy,  and  end  in  a 
draw  or  a  victory  by  an  odd  pawn." 

The  darker  side  of  his  nature  almost  balanced, 
in  intensity,  the  brighter.  There  is  a  weird, 
almost  Dantesque,  vein  running  through  it. 
His  love  of  life  and  beauty  gave  rise  to  a 
perfectly  morbid  horror  of  what  was  ugly  or 
sad — illness  and  death  were  ideas  utterly  re- 
pugnant in  the  terror  they  bore  in  upon  him. 
In  a  private  letter  he  speaks  of  "  Death  and 
the  North  Wind — both  Devil's  inventions  as  far 
as  I  can  make  out."  Indeed,  during  one  of  his 
last  visits  to  London,  I  heard  him  say  how  his 
attacks  of  illness  were  brought  on,  or,  at  least, 
in  a  measure,  induced,  by  the  knowledge  of 
the  gradual  approach  of  death — not  so  much 
the  fear  of  death,  he  hastened  to  add,  as  the 


58  JOHN  RUSK  IN. 

regret  at  the  deprivation  of  life,  which  he  was 
convinced  he  enjoyed  with  infinitely  greater 
intensity  than  others  did. 

The  very  idea  of  a  funeral  was  abhorrent  to 
him.  He  even  declined  to  attend  that  of  the 
Duke  of  Albany,  of  whom  he  was  very  fond ; 
for  the  young  Prince  often  sought  his  company 
at  Oxford,  and  the  old  man  and  the  young 
learned  to  appreciate  the  virtues  of  the  other. 
"  I  had  the  deepest  regard  and  respect,"  he 
said  about  the  time  of  the  Duke's  death,  "  for 
what  I  would  call  his  genius,  rather  than  his 
intellect.  He  was  entirely  graceful  and  kind 
in  every  thought  or  deed.  There  was  no 
mystery  about  him — he  was  perfectly  frank 
and  easy  with  everyone.  At  Oxford  I  thought 
he  desired  to  take  all  the  advantage  that  was 
possible  from  the  university  course.  But  I  did 
not  attend  the  funeral.  It  is  ten  years  or  more 
since  I  went  to  one,"  he  continued  gravely; 
"and  though  there  are  several  whom  I  love 
very  dearly,  I  doubt  very  much  if  I  should  see 
them  to  the  grave  were  they  to  die  before  me. 
No — I  shall  go  to  no  more  funerals  till  I  go 
to  my  own."  In  this  relation  there  may  be 
appropriately  quoted  the  reply  he  sent  to  the 
Secretary  of  the  Church  of  England  Funeral 
Reform  Association — a  society  of  all  others  of 
whose  attentions  and  requests  for  recommenda- 


CHARACTER,  HEALTH,  AND    TEMPERAMENT.     59 

tion  and   approval   he  would  most   cheerfully 
have  dispensed  : — 

"Sir, — I  entirely  approve  of  the  object  of  the  Funeral 
Reform  Association ;  but  if  I  could  stop  people  from 
wasting  their  money  while  they  were  alive,  they  might 
bury  themselves  how  they  liked  for  aught  I  care. 

"  Faithfully  yours, 

"John  Ruskin." 

The  growing  knowledge  of  a  constitutional 
brain-weakness  caused  him  acute  suffering,  and 
he  made  no  attempt  to  conceal  the  fact ;  on  the 
contrary,  it  was  a  frank  topic  of  conversation 
with  him.  There  is  something  profoundly 
pathetic  in  a  reference  of  his  to  his  keen  enjoy- 
ment, in  his  childhood,  in  reading  Don  Quixote's 
crazy  life,  but  of  the  superlative  sadness  with 
which  the  reference  or  thought  of  it  filled  him 
in  later  years.  "My  illnesses,  so-called,"  he 
says  somewhere  else,  "  are  only  brought  on 
by  vexation  or  worry,  and  leave  me,  after  a 
few  weeks  of  wandering  thoughts,  the  same 
as  I  was  before,  only  a  little  sadder  and  wiser. 
Probably,  if  I  am  spared  till  I  am  seventy,  I 
shall  be  as  sad  and  wise  as  I  ever  wish  to  be, 
and  will  try  to  keep  so  to  the  end." 

At  the  age  of  twenty-one  he  spat  blood,  as 
a  result  of  putting  on  a  spurt  in  his  study  at 
Oxford,  and  obtained  a  year's  leave  of  absence 
to  recover.      Ever  since  that  time  his   letters 


6o  JOHN  RUSK  IN. 

are  proof  of  constant  ailing  and  sometimes  of 
suffering. 

True  illness,  severe  enough  to  confine  him 
to  his  bed,  he  never  had,  from  his  alarming 
Oxford  symptoms  down  to  1871,  v^^hen  an 
inflammatory  illness  laid  him  low  at  Matlock. 
Of  the  manner  in  which  he  characteristically 
took  his  treatment  in  great  measure  into  his 
own  hands  he  writes  thus,  under  date  24th 
July,  1871  :— 

"Really  your  simplicity  about  naughty  me  is  the  most 
comic  thing  I  know,  among  all  my  old  friends.  Me 
docile  to  Doctors  !  I  watched  them — (I  had  three) — to 
see  what  they  knew  of  the  matter :  did  what  they  advised 
me,  for  two  days;  found  they  were  utterly  ignorant  of 
the  illness  &  were  killing  me.  I  had  inflammation  of 
the  bowels,  and  they  gave  me  ice  !  &  tried  to  nourish 
me  with  milk  !  Another  12  hours  &  I  should  have  been 
past  hope.  I  stopped  in  the  middle  of  a  draught  of  iced 
water,  burning  with  insatiable  thirst — thought  over  the 
illness  myself  steadily — and  ordered  the  doctors  out  of 
the  house.  Everybody  was  in  agony,  but  I  swore  and 
raged  till  they  had  to  give  in ;  ordered  hot  toast  and 
water  in  quantities,  and  mustard  poultices  to  the  bowels. 
One  doctor  had  ordered  fomentation  ;  that  I  persevered 
in,  adding  mustard  to  give  outside  pain.  I  used  brandy 
and  water  as  hot  as  I  could  drink  it,  for  stimulant,  kept 
myself  up  with  it,  washed  myself  out  with  floods  of  toast 
and  water,  &  ate  nothing  &  refused  all  medicines.  In 
twenty-four  hours  I  had  brought  the  pain  under,  in 
twenty- four  more  I  had  healthy  appetite  for  meat,  and 
was  safe ;  but  the  agony  of  poor  Joanna !  forced  to  give 


JOHN  RUSKTN  AT  GLENFINLAS  WATERFALL,  1853. 

BY    SIR    JOHN    MILLAIS,    HART.,  R.A. 

{Bj  Special  permission  of  Sir  Henry  Acland,  07vner  of  the  picture  and  copyright.) 

(See  p.  775.) 


CHARACTER,  HEALTH,  AND    TEMPERAMENT.    63 

me  meat,  for  I  ordered  roast  chicken  instantly,  when  the 
doctors,  unable  to  get  at  me,  were  imploring  her  to 
prevail  on  me  not  to  kill  myself,  as  they  said  I  should. 
The  poor  thing  stood  it  nobly — of  course — none  of  them 
could  move  me,  on  which  I  forced  them  to  give  me  cold 
roast  beef  &  mustard  at  two  o'clock  in  the  morning  !  ! 
And  here  I  am,  thank  God,  to  all  intents  and  purposes 
quite  well  again ;  but  I  was  within  an  ace  of  the  grave, 
and  I  know  now  something  of  Doctors  that — well — I 
thought  Moliere  bad  enough  on  them,  but  he's  compli- 
mentary to  what  /  shall  be  after  this." 

But  with  the  exception  of  this  grave,  tragi- 
comical attack  he  never  needed  the  calHng  in  of 
a  doctor  for  any  physical  ill.  Yet  at  no  time 
was  he  robust,  a  spine-weakness  developed  into 
a  chronic  stoop,  and  the  aches  and  pains  of  a 
highly  nervous,  hard-worked  constitution  were 
for  ever  reminding  him  of  the  weakness  of  all 
flesh.  A  number  of  his  letters  are  before  me, 
written  to  his  secretary  and  assistant — with 
whom,  as  I  have  already  said,  he  was  in  ex- 
tremely frequent  communication — during  the 
years  1865  and  1866;  and  in  many  of  them 
may  be  seen  the  record  of  his  ailing  moments 
and  minor  infirmities. 

"You  must  think  it  very  strange  in  me,"  he  writes 
under  date  3rd  November,  1865,  "never  asking  you  to 
come  and  see  me.  But  I  am  very  languid  and  ill  just 
now — and  I  seem  of  all  things  to  dread  talking;  it 
seems  to  force  me  to  use  my  head  faster  than  it  should 


64  JOHN  RUSK  IN. 

be   used — I   suppose   I   shall    come   out   of    the    nervous 
fit  some  day.     I  am  pretty  well  on  the  whole." 

In  the  summer  of  the  next  year  (3rd  August, 
1866)  he  writes  : — 

"I've  been  very  sulky  and  ill,  and  somehow  have 
wanted  what  humanity  I  could  get,  even  out  of  letters, 
so  I've  kept  them." 

Again,  on  the  3rd  of  November  of  the  same 
year,  he  says  : — 

"You  can't  at  all  think  what  complicated  and  acute 
worry  I've  been  living  in  the  last  two  months.  I'm 
getting  a  little  less  complex  now — only  steady  headache 
instead  of  thorn-fillet — I  don't  mean  to  be  irreverent; 
but  in  a  small  way  in  one's  poor  little  wretched  humanity 
it  but  expresses  the  differences.  That's  why  I  couldn't 
think  about  Cruikshank  or  anything." 

On  the  2nd  of  December  he  again  com- 
plains : — 

"I  have  perpetual  faceache,  which  quinine  hardly 
touches,  and  am  pulled  down  rather  far;  but  in  other 
respects  a  little  better — stomach  and  the  like." 

And  so  things  went  on — never  very  bad, 
but  often  bad  enough  to  worry  the  neurotic 
subject  with  his  Httle  valetudinary  troubles, 
while  all  the  while  his  self-imposed  tasks  in- 
creased in  daily  volume.  At  one  time,  indeed, 
the  correspondence  of  friends  and  applicants 
of  all  kinds,  and  particularly  of  sympathisers — 
those  most    troublesome    of  well-wishers — en- 


CHARACTER,  HEALTH,  AND    TEMPERAMENT.    65 

croached  so  severely  upon  his  time  and  patience, 
rendering  the  conditions  of  his  life  almost  intol- 
erable, that  the  issue  of  this  quaint  manifesto 
was  decided  upon  : — 

"Mr.  Ruskin  trusts  that  his  friends  will  pardon  his 
declining  correspondence  in  the  spring,  and  spending 
such  days  as  may  be  spared  to  him  in  the  fields,  instead 
of  at  his  desk.  Had  he  been  well  he  would  have  been 
in  Switzerland,  and  begs  his  correspondents  to  imagine 
that  he  is  so ;  for  there  is  no  reason,  because  he  is 
obliged  to  stop  in  England,  that  he  should  not  be 
allowed  to  rest  there." 

Little  wonder,  then,  that  his  health  told  upon 
his  temper,  and  that  nervous  irritability  tended 
to  modify  his  character,  and,  to  some  extent, 
tended  to  embitter  an  old  age  that  was  already 
full  of  disappointments  and  disillusionments. 
After  a  lifetime  of  preaching  to  an  unheeding 
world,  or  battling  with  a  hostile  or  scornful  one, 
finding  his  system  of  philosophy  and  theories 
rejected,  or,  if  accepted,  accepted  only  as  the 
teaching  of  other  and  younger  men,  it  is  but 
natural  that  he  should  be  prompted  to  say, 
after  half-a-century  of  toil,  "  Some  of  me  is 
dead,  more  of  me  stronger.  I  have  learned  a 
few  things,  forgotten  many.  In  the  total  of 
me,  I  am  but  the  same  youth,  disappointed  and 
rheumatic."  But,  not  beaten  even  to  the  last; 
badgered  and   baited  all  through  his  life  ;   at- 

e  6* 


66  JOHN  RUSK  IN. 

tacked  by  some,  scoffed  at  by  others — as  all 
fighters  of  original  genius  must  ever  be — he 
complained  not  of  counter-attack.  It  was  the 
supineness  of  those  who  listened  and  applauded, 
but  continued  in  what  he  held  was  the  down- 
ward road,  which  caused  him  to  confess  the 
state  of  "  quiet  rage  and  wonder  at  everything 
people  say  and  do  in  which  I  habitually  live." 


CHAPTER   III. 

AUTHOR,  BOOKMAN,  AND  STYLIST. 

It  is  presumed  that  most  of  those  who  read 
these  pages  are  too  well  informed  on  Ruskin's 
work  to  need  any  recapitulation  of  the  order, 
or  the  titles,  or  even  the  purpose  of  his  books. 
But  it  may  be  set  down  that  they  comprise 
art-criticism,  art-instruction,  architecture,  natural 
history,  political  economy,  morals  and  ethics, 
mineralogy  and  geology,  biography  and  auto- 
biography, fairy  -  tale,  military  tactics,  the 
"  higher  journalism "  and  most  other  things 
besides.  But  time  will,  perhaps,  decide  that 
by  "  Modern  Painters  "  he  will  both  stand  and 
fall — a  paradox  which  himself,  I  fancy,  would 
be  the  first  to  admit.  It  is  the  monument 
he  has  raised  to  himself:  but  other  works 
rank  above  them  in  the  late  author's  opinion, 
if  not  for  literary  style,  at  least  for  concision 
of  manner  and  closeness  of  thougrht.  He  told 
me  he  had  "never  written  closer"  than  in 
his  University  Lectures,  known  as  "  Aratra 
Pentelici"    ("and    they  will    recognise    it   one 

of  these  days  "),  while  he  has  publicly  declared 

67 


68  JOHN  RUSK  IN. 

that  in  that  book,  in  "  Val  d'Arno,"  and 
"  Eagle's  Nest,"  "  every  word  is  weighed  with 
care."  *'I  give  far  more  care  to  my  lectures 
than  to  my  books,"  he  said  ;  '*  They  are  for  the 
most  part  most  carefully  written,  although  I 
sometimes  introduce  matter  extemporaneously 
in  the  delivery  of  them.  I  have  taken  more 
pains  with  my  Oxford  lectures  than  with  any- 
thing else  I  have  ever  done,  and  I  must  say 
that  I  am  immensely  disappointed  at  their  not 
being  more  constantly  quoted  and  read."  And 
thus  saying,  he  took  down  a  volume  of  the 
"  Aratra "  and  read  the  concluding  pages  of 
one  of  the  lectures  in  his  own  powerful  and 
impressive  manner.  Then  he  closed  the  book, 
softly,  with  a  sigh. 

Ruskin  was,  indeed,  a  rigorous  critic  of 
his  own  work,  and  cut  to  pieces  "  Modern 
Painters,"  "Seven  Lamps  of  Architecture," 
"  Stones  of  Venice,"  and  "  Elements  of  Draw- 
ing," when  preparing  second  editions,  **  be- 
cause in  the  three  first  all  the  religious 
notions  are  narrow,  and  many  false,  and  in 
the  fourth  there  is  a  vital  mistake  about  out- 
line, doing  great  damage  to  all  the  rest." 
But  if  it  is  one  of  the  disturbing  faults  of 
Ruskin's  books  that  he  often  owns  to  his 
later  change  of  thought,  it  is  one  of  his 
merits  that   he  is  ready  to   confess   it,  clearly 


AUTHOR,  BOOKMAN,  AND   STYLIST.  69 

and  unmistakably.  These  changes  of  thought 
he  once  intended  to  tabulate,  while  quaintly 
apologising  for  them.  "  Mosdy  matters  of 
any  consequence  are  three-sided,  or  four- 
sided,  or  polygonal;  and  the  trotting  round 
a  polygon  is  severe  work  for  people  in  any 
way  stiff  in  their  opinions."  At  the  same 
time  he  declared  that  his  changes  were  those 
of  a  tree,  by  nourishment  and  natural  growth 
— not  those  of  a  cloud.  And  what  is  his 
reflection  on  his  own  auctorlal  life?  "I  am 
quite  horrified  to  see,"  he  wrote  to  "Susie" 
— or  was  it  "  Rosie  "  ? — "  what  a  lot  of  books 
I've  written,  and  how  cruel  I've  been  to  my- 
self and  everybody  else  whoever  has  to  read 
them." 

It  was  in  his  quality  of  author  that  Ruskin 
ran  a-tilt  at  the  book-selling  trade,  and  suffered 
not  a  little  in  pocket  from  their  retaliation. 
He  objected  to  the  whole  system  of  "  discount" 
as  it  had  already  then  degenerated.  The 
trade,  not  unnaturally,  perhaps,  retorted  with 
a  very  effectual  boycott,  and  Mr.  Ruskin  had 
to  distribute  his  books  to  the  public  direct 
from  his  own  special  and  private  publisher — 
Mr.  George  Allen,  who  before  had  been  his 
engraver.  More  lately  a  compromise  was 
effected  with  the  shops  ;  but,  curiously  enough, 
the  trade  boycott  seems  to  have  been  taken 


70  JOHN  RUSK  IN. 

Up  by  the  Press,  which  for  a  long  series  of 
years  maintained  rigorous  silence  in  respect 
to  Mr,  Ruskin's  newly  -  published  works. 
Writing  in  1887,  Mr.  E.  T.  Cook  remarked: 
"  So,  too,  the  professedly  literary  journals  have 
not  noticed  anything  that  one  of  the  foremost 
literary  men  of  the  time  has  written  since 
1872!"  Meanwhile,  his  works  were  being 
pirated  in  America  and  his  own  editions  under- 
sold— a  circumstance  which  increased  his  dis- 
like to  the  vulgarer  side  of  American  life,  and 
of  that  unhappy  country  "which  contains  neither 
castle  nor  ruins." 

There  is  assuredly  no  need  to  await  the  ver- 
dict of  posterity  to  establish  Ruskin's  position 
as  a  writer  of  English  prose.  No  man  pos- 
sessed of  such  a  power  of  language,  such  a 
wealth  of  imagination  and  beauty  of  thought 
ever  spent  more  care  in  the  polishing  of  his 
sentences.  And  this  not  only  with  his  written 
books,  but  with  his  newspaper  letters,  on  which 
— as  he  told  me  himself — he  expended  the 
utmost  pains  at  his  command. 

With  such  natural  gifts  as  these,  his  training 
was  exactly  such  as  would  best  develop  his 
powers  and  form  his  style.  The  extensive 
Bible-reading  and  Bible-learning,  forced  upon 
him  when  a  child,  laid  the  foundations  for 
pure   and  vigorous    English,  and   encouraged 


AUTHOR,  BOOKMAN,  AND  STYLIST.  71 

his  later  admiration  for  the  manner  of  Dr. 
Johnson.  This  alone  would  have  gone  far  to 
educate  him  into  the  accomplished  rhapsodist 
he  soon  became.  But  other  carefully-selected 
reading  exerted  powerful  influence  upon  his 
future  style.  Byron  and  Wordsworth  he 
studied  carefully  (and  indeed  knew  pretty  well 
by  heart) — the  former  for  perfect  fluency  and 
realistic  truth  of  vision,  and  the  latter  for  the 
beauty  of  simplicity  and  naturalness  of  language 
and  expression.  "  Even  Shakespeare's  Venice 
was  visionary ;  and  Portia  as  impossible  as 
Miranda.  But  Byron  told  me  of,  and  re- 
animated for  me,  the  real  people  whose  feet 
had  worn  the  marble  I  trod  on."  And,  finally, 
Carlyle,  his  friend  and  admirer,  gave  the  final 
turn  of  originality  of  expression  and  that  effec- 
tive directness  and  apparent  ruggedness  which 
endows  all  that  Ruskin  ever  wrote  with  a  rich 
quality  of  its  own,  and  made  the  man,  as  Mr. 
Justice  Pearson  said,  "the  most  eloquent  writer 
of  English,  except  Jeremy  Taylor."  In  point 
of  thought,  Ruskin  often  confessed  himself  the 
pupil  of  Carlyle  ;  but  hardly  less  is  he  so  in  re- 
spect to  literary  expression  ;  and  the  Sage  of 
Chelsea  returned  the  compliment  by  declaring 
to  Mr.  Froude  that  many  of  Ruskin's  utter- 
ances "pierced  like  arrows  into  my  heart." 
We  surely  do  not  require  the  enthusiastic  attes- 


72  JOHN  RUSK  IN. 

tation  of  Mathew  Arnold,  or  George  Eliot,  or 
John  Morley,  or  the  rest,  of  Ruskin's  trans- 
cendent position  as  a  prose-writer ;  but  if  it  be 
true,  as  indeed  it  is,  that  "  Ruskin  writes  beau- 
tifully because  he  thinks  beautifully,  because  his 
thoughts  spring,  like  Pallas,  ready  armed,"  it 
was  not  because  "the  fashion  of  the  armour 
costs  him  nothing,"  for  his  note-books  exist, 
like  the  sketch-books  of  a  painter,  with  beauti- 
ful descriptive  sentences,  sweetly  turned  and 
carefully  moulded,  ready  for  use  when  required, 
thus  attesting  the  constant  and  almost  exces- 
sive care,  as  well  as  the  constructive  method  of 
his  style. 

Ruskin's  own  estimate  of  his  work,  in  his 
comparison  of  it  with  Tennyson's,  is  delightful 
in  its  modesty,  and  sufficient  testimony  of  his 
critical  faculty,  or,  at  least,  unselfish  appreci- 
ation. "As  an  illustrator  of  natural  beauty 
Tennyson  is  far  beyond  anything  I  ever  did  or 
could  have  done,"  he  says ;  and  elsewhere  de- 
clared that  there  is  finer  word-painting  in  the 
poet's  "  Brook  "  than  can  be  found  in  all  his 
own  prose-writings  put  together.  But,  for  all 
that,  Ruskin  is  and  must  be  regarded,  by  friend 
and  foe  alike,  as  the  great  modern  master  of 
English  prose — the  Magician  of  Coniston  Lake. 


CHAPTER   IV. 

THE  ARTIST. 

A  dozen  years  ago  it  might  have  been  neces- 
sary to  defend  the  position  of  Ruskin  as  an 
artist,  or  perhaps  even  primarily  to  inform  the 
general  public  of  the  wondrous  beauty  to  be 
found  in  his  drawings.  But  since  that  time 
editio7is  de  luxe  have  fully  established  his  rank 
as  one  of  the  most  exquisite  draughtsmen,  both 
with  the  point  and  in  water-colour  sketching, 
that  the  country  has  produced.  His  work  is 
limited  in  extent,  rarely  completed,  and  never 
executed  for  public  exhibition  ;  but  for  manual 
skill,  microscopic  truth  of  observation,  directed 
and  moulded  by  a  passionate  poetic  sense  of 
the  most  refined  and  gentle  order,  he  has  rarely 
been  excelled.  He  was,  in  truth,  a  landscape 
and  architectural  artist  of  the  greatest  talent, 
of  infinite  delicacy,  grace,  feeling,  and  patience  ; 
and  the  writer  has  more  than  once  heard  him 
deplore  that  he  had  not  given  a  greater  share 
of  his  life  to  the  practice  of  art  by  which  he 
might  have  effected  more  real  good  than  by  all 
his   word-painting   and    pen-preaching :    "  Not 

D  7  73 


74  JOHN  RUSK  IN. 

that  I  should  have  done  anything  great,"  said 
he,  "  but  I  could  have  made  such  beautiful 
records  of  things.  It  is  one  of  the  greatest 
chagrins  of  my  life." 

In  respect  to  his  theories  of  art,  its  technique, 
and  execution,  Ruskin  entertained  views  which 
were  not  shared  by  the  majority  of  the  greatest 
painters  of  his  day — even  of  most  of  his  most  in- 
timate friends  and  admirers.  Such,  for  exam- 
ple, was  the  theory  that  all  shadows  should  be 
painted  purple — a  dictum  which  most  of  the 
luministes  of  later  days,  the  very  "  polar  con- 
traries "  of  Ruskin,  have  widely  adopted, 
though  not  perhaps  to  the  full  extent.  Mr. 
Goodall,  R.A.,  told  me  once  of  the  surprise 
of  Madame  Rosa  Bonheur  when  Ruskin  laid 
down  this  proposition  to  her  with  all  the  firm- 
ness of  conviction,  and  stoutly  maintained 
through  their  crisp  little  discussion  that  thus 
should  all  her  shadows  be  painted.  "  Mais  out, 
ma-t-il  bie7i  dit^  said  she,  in  repeating  the  con- 
versation, *'  rouge  et  bleu  ;  "  and  she  further  de- 
clared that  she  was  convinced  that  his  views 
on  this  matter,  as  well  as  on  his  artistic  work 
generally,  were  governed  by  a  physical  pecu- 
liarity of  his  retina,  and  that  he  possessed  be- 
sides the  microscopic  eye  of  a  bird :  "//  voit 
precisement  comme  un  oiseau!'  This  sugges- 
tion, so  swiftly  and  deftly  made,  goes  a  good 


THE  ARTIST.  75 

way  towards  explaining  Ru skin's  love  of  ex- 
haustive detail,  the  more  accurately  drawn  and 
exquisitely  finished  the  better;  but  it  hardly 
tallies  with  the  frequent  breadth  of  handling 
and  largeness  of  view  to  be  found  in  his  own 
work.  Perhaps  it  was,  in  a  measure,  his  early 
training  in  facsimile  copying  of  great  models 
that  rendered  him  so  precise,  encouraged 
thereto  by  his  own  natural  bent  and  genius  for 
criticism  and  subtle  analysis  ;  but  no  less  was 
it  his  scientific  knowledge  and  his  cultivated 
accuracy  that  served  him  so  well  in  the  making 
of  his  innumerable  sketches  of  natural  phe- 
nomena and  artistic  shorthand  notes  of  every 
sort  of  detail,  to  say  nothing  of  his  profound 
study  and  elaborate  drawings  of  architecture — 
geometrical  as  well  as  picturesque.  It  is,  per- 
haps, not  too  much  to  say  that  his  "  Glacier 
des  Bossons,  Chamouni " — in  which  the  ice  is 
inimitably  represented  creeping  down  the  hill- 
side— with  its  exquisite  drawing,  its  refinement 
and  delicacy,  and  its  beauty  of  sparkling  colour, 
has  never  been  surpassed  in  its  own  line  by 
any  artist  however  eminent. 

His  actual  masters  in  art,  it  has  already  been 
said,  were  J.  D.  Harding  (who  was  the  first  to 
inspire  him  with  the  idea  that  there  was  some- 
thing more  soulful  and  philosophic  in  art  than 
appears  upon  the  surface)  and  Copley  Fielding. 


76  JOHN  RUSK  IN. 

Then  came  his  love  for  Prout — he  who  above  all 
others  appreciated  "  Modern  Painters "  to  the 
full  when  it  first  appeared.  It  was  upon  his 
manner  that  Ruskin  loved  to  form  his  own,  as 
may  be  seen  in  the  early  drawing  of  "The 
Cathedral  Spire,  Rouen  "  (reproduced  on  page 
8i)  and  in  many  another  work  of  his  early 
years.  Of  this  "Rouen,"  by  the  way,  pub- 
lished with  two  other  drawings  in  the  Maga- 
zine of  Aj't  in  1886,  he  wrote  to  me:  "There 
ought  to  be  a  separate  half-page  of  apology  for 
the  drawings  of  mine,  in  which  the  Rouen  is  a 
little  bit  too  childish  to  show  my  proper  early 
architectural  power.  All  my  really  good  draw- 
ings are  too  large — and  most  of  them  at 
Oxford  ;  but  I  should  like  you  to  give  one  of 
them,  some  day." 

He  remained  true  to  his  "  Proutism,"  which 
he  cultivated  so  assiduously,  to  the  end;  for, 
speaking  of  his  Brantwood  drawings,  he  said : 
"  Prout  is  one  of  the  loves  that  always  remain 
fresh  to  me ;  sometimes  I  tire  of  Turner,  but 
never  of  Prout."  To  what  extent  Turner  was 
his  idol  it  is  not  necessary  here  to  insist:  for 
Turner  practically  came  for  many  years  to  be 
Ruskin's  raison  d'etre.  Then  followed  his  love 
for  William  Hunt  and  David  Roberts ;  and  on 
the  work  of  all  these  men  his  own  style  of  art 
was  founded.     But  his  approval  of  Roberts  was 


^ 


1  .,    ^(i^-u^o/ 


^ 


^■au-H.    tn--*^ 


^^f- 


-tut.  a-»^i>  t(j_     ii\c*^'-i' 


A  PAGE  OF  ONE  OF  RUSKIN'S  NOTE-BOOKS,  MADE  WHEN 

HE  WAS  PREPARING  "THE  STONES  OF  VENICE." 

{By  permission  of  Mrs.  Arthur  Severn.) 


THE  ARTIST.  79 

greatly  modified  by  time  and  by  Roberts'  own 
development  and  change.  The  story  is  still 
recounted  with  a  chuckle  how  Ruskin  once  felt 
it  necessary  to  print  a  rather  severe  criticism 
upon  Roberts'  work,  but  wrote  a  private  note 
expressing  the  hope  that  it  might  make  no 
difference  to  their  friendship,  and  how  the  artist 
replied  that  when  next  he  met  him  he  would 
punch  Ruskin 's  head,  but  hoped  that  that  would 
in  no  way  disturb  their  pleasant  and  cordial 
relations. 


CHAPTER  V. 

THE  TEACHER. 

The  teaching  of  John  Ruskin  might  for 
convenience  sake  be  divided  into  Art  and 
General  Teaching,  which  together  form  a 
synthetic  philosophy,  erratic  enough  at  first 
sight  to  a  superficial  observer,  but  consistent 
and  focussed  in  aim  when  properly  under- 
stood. Codified  as  has  been  his  teaching  by 
Mr.  Collingwood,  Mr.  Cook,  and  minor  dis- 
ciples, it  is  simple  and  clear,  its  fundamental 
principles  being  honesty,  piety,  and  sincerity  in 
all  things — in  Art  as  in  Ethics.  A  philosopher 
so  impulsive  and,  at  times,  so  hasty  as  Mr. 
Ruskin,  writing  more  often,  as  it  has  been 
said,  in  the  character  of  the  pamphleteer 
than  in  that  of  the  academist  or  pundit, 
naturally  laid  himself  freely  open  to  attack. 
Of  this  weakness  advantage  was  from  time 
to  time  fully  taken  by  vigorous  and  pitiless 
assailants.  A  fighter  of  the  Puritan  sort — 
**as  zealous,  pugnacious,  and  self-sure  a  Prot- 
estant   as    you    please,"    as    he    himself    has 

expressed  it — Ruskin  hit  hard,  loving  nothing 
So 


THE   CATHEDRAL   SPIRE,  ROUEN. 

DRAWN    BY    BUSKIN,  UNDER    THE    INFLUENCE   OF    PROUT. 
{^By  permission  of  Mrs.  Arthur  Severn.) 


THE  TEACHER.  83 

SO  much  as  to  pillory  acknowledged  wrongs 
and  conventional  rights.  He  thus  made  for 
himself  more  enemies  than  most  men,  though 
not  so  many,  perhaps,  as  he  would  had 
people  not  regarded  him  as  something  of  a 
prophet  of  old,  or  as  a  hot-tempered  enthu- 
siast, whose  seriously  over-charged  brain  often 
carried  him  beyond  the  limits  of  soberer  judg- 
ment and  moderation.  Rarely  has  an  Eng- 
lishman of  letters  been  the  subject  of  such  a 
slashing  and  abusive  attack  as  Ruskin  but  a 
few  years  since  was  the  victim  of  at  the  hands 
of  the  Quarterly  Review,  and  many  others 
joined  with  interest  in  the  campaign  of  retalia- 
tion. The  development  of  his  ideas  with  time 
and  maturity  of  judgment  placed  a  ready 
weapon  in  the  hands  of  his  opponents,  which 
they  were  not  slow  to  use ;  but  more  than  once 
he  has  turned  and  emptied  upon  them  with 
withering  effect  the  vials  of  his  wrath  and 
scathing  invective,  which  have  few,  if  any, 
parallels  in  the  language. 

Early  in  his  career  he  assumed  the  "apos- 
tolic attitude"  in  respect,  not  only  to  art,  but 
to  the  whole  principles  of  life.  Applying  the 
results  of  his  thoughts  and  doctrines,  he  came 
to  set  up  Religion  and  Ethics  as  in  direct  oppo- 
sition to  Science  and  Avarice ;  and  there  we 
have  the  philosophy  of  his  early  life  in  a  nut- 


84  JOHN  RUSK  IN. 

shell.  He  was  not  long  before  he  modified 
this  view  to  a  sensible  degree  ;  his  Evangelical 
traininof  begfan  to  fade  before  his  kindlier  senti- 
ments,  and  loosened  its  uncompromising  grip. 
But  from  the  beginning  to  the  end  his  motto 
was  "All  great  art  is  praise;"  and  this  he 
followed  logically  with  the  thesis  that  "  the 
teaching  of  art  is  the  teaching  of  all  things." 
Art,  he  said,  is  to  minister  to  a  sense  of  beauty 
— a  view  which  enabled  him  to  bring  nearly 
every  subject  within  his  net ;  and  then,  in- 
versely, he  taught  that  beauty  in  all  things — 
actual,  aesthetic,  moral,  and  ethical — that  was 
the  end  and  aim  of  life.  It  was  to  the  propa- 
gation of  this  idea  that  he  set  his  mind — that 
mind  which  Mazzini  declared  was  the  most 
analytical  in  Europe ;  but  the  length  to  which 
he  carried  his  arguments — such  as  that  no  man 
can  be  an  architect  who  is  not  also  a  metaphy- 
sician— raised  a  veritable  storm  of  criticism  and 
dissent,  upon  which  the  young  philosopher  rode 
forward  in  triumph  and  delight. 

George  Eliot — who  said  "  I  venerate  him  as 
one  of  the  great  teachers  of  the  age  :  he  teaches 
with  the  inspiration  of  the  Hebrew  prophet " — 
saw  no  reason  to  contest  his  two  leading  doc- 
trines— a  Quixotic  purity  of  commercial  morality 
carried  almost  to  the  point  of  impracticability 
and  stagnation,  and  a  religious  view  of  higher 


[  ■ 

V 


^■^". 


.^ 


m" 


,q,,hJ?©3;v 


JOHN    RL'SKIN,   1S57. 

l-RliM    TllK    I'OKTKAir    IN    COLOURED    CHALK    l;Y    GEORGE    RICHMOND,  R.A. 

[By  />£rm/s.u'o/t  of  Arthur  Severn,  Esq.,  R.I.) 

{See  p.  /S-2.) 


THE   TEACHER.  87 

art  developed  almost  to  the  point  of  monastic 
exclusiveness  and  ethical  fervour.  His  search 
after  honesty  and  truth  in  Art  enabled  him  to 
claim  with  pride  that  "  it  was  left  to  me,  and  me 
alone,  first  to  discern  and  then  to  teach — as  far 
as  in  this  hurried  century  any  such  thing  can  be 
taught — the  excellence  and  supremacy  of  five 
great  painters,  despised  until  I  spoke  of  them  : 
Turner,  Tintoret,  Luini,  Botticelli,  and  Carpac- 
cio."  But  his  happiness  in  the  analysis  and 
establishment  of  past  triumphs  in  art  rendered 
him  the  more  dejected  in  the  contemplation 
of  what  he  considered  was  its  present  tendency 
in  England.  "  I  have  only  stopped  grumbling," 
he  exclaimed,  **  because  I  find  that  grumbling 
is  of  no  use.  I  believe  that  all  the  genius  of 
modern  artists  is  directed  to  tastes  which  are 
in  vicious  states  of  wealth  in  cities,  and  that, 
on  the  whole,  they  are  in  the  service  of  a  luxu- 
rious class  who  must  be  amused,  or  worse  than 
amused.  There  is  twenty  times  more  effort 
than  there  used  to  be,  far  greater  skill,  but  far 
less  pleasure  in  the  exercise  of  it  in  the  artists 
themselves.  I  may  say  that  my  chief  feeling 
is  that  things  are  going  powerfully  to  the  bad, 
but  that  there  may  be  something — no  one 
knows  how  or  when — which  may  start  up  and 
check  it.     Look  at  those  drawings  of  Turner 

on  the  wall — there  is  nothing  wrong  in  them  ; 

8 


88  JOHN  RUSK  IN. 

but  In  every  exhibition  there  is  something 
wrong :  the  pictures  are  either  too  sketchy  or 
too  finished  ;  there  is  something  wrong  with 
the  man — up  to  the  very  highest." 

In  ordinary  life  he  thought  he  discovered 
that  manual  labor  and  every  effort  of  the  body, 
to  the  exclusion  of  all  mechanical  assistance, 
was  thrice-blessed,  and  the  more  highly  sancti- 
fied the  baser  and  more  menial  the  office. 

*'  When  Adam  delved  and  Eve  span, 
Who  was  then  the  gentleman  ?  " 

must  have  been  more  than  once  in  his  mind. 
And  thus  it  was  that  he  learned  the  art  of 
crossing-sweeping  in  London  from  a  knight  of 
the  broom,  and  the  art  of  road-making  too. 
It  speaks  eloquently  for  his  power  of  per- 
suasion and  his  sway  over  the  affections  of  his 
pupils,  that  he  brought  the  Oxford  under- 
graduates, during  his  Slade  professorship,  to 
play  the  navvy,  and  with  pick  and  spade  to 
construct  the  Hincksey  Road,  to  the  delight 
and  amusement  of  all  the  countryside.  The 
road,  I  believe,  is  a  very  bad  one,  disgracefully 
so,  save  in  that  small  portion  to  which  Ruskin 
called  in  the  professional  help  of  his  gardener ; 
but  it  was  made,  and  that  was  enough  for  him. 
The  story — perhaps  an  apochryphal  one — goes 
in  Oxford  that  Mr.  Andrew  Lang  was  one  of 


THE   TEACHER.  89 

the  undergraduates ;  who,  with  a  lurking  sus- 
picion as  to  the  efficacy  and  rightness  of  the 
whole  business,  as  well  as  with  a  lively  sense  of 
the  ludicrous,  used  to  take  his  pickaxe  and  drive 
down  in  a  hansom  to  the  scene  of  operations. 

In  fact,  Muscle  versus  Machinery  was  one  of 
the  tenets  of  Ruskin's  vital  creed.  He  hated 
railways  for  three  reasons  :  partly  because  they 
defaced  the  country  and  fouled  the  air ;  partly 
because  they  were  usually  constructed  rather 
as  a  speculation  (the  immorality  of  gambling!), 
with  the  sole  view  not  to  utility,  but  to  profit 
(the  immorality  of  sordidness  !)  ;  and  chiefly 
because  they  wiped  out  the  good  old-fashioned 
travelling,  with  patience  and  industry,  with 
thew  and  muscle.  Railways,  he  said,  if  rightly 
understood,  are  but  a  device  to  make  the  world 
smaller ;  but  he  ignored  the  necessary  corollary 
— that  they  made  life  longer  and  larger,  at 
least  to  the  traveller.  When  the  abortive  at- 
tempt was  being  made  to  pass  a  Bill  for  the 
Ambleside  Railway  through  the  Committee  of 
the  House,  I  had  but  to  refer  to  the  scheme 
which  was  to  have  brought  the  bane  of  his  life 
into  the  very  heart  of  the  Lake  district,  to  fire 
him  at  the  bare  mention  of  it.  "  Whenever  I 
think  of  it,"  he  cried  warmly,  "I  get  so  angry 
that  I    begin  to    fear   an  attack   of   apoplexy. 

There  is  no  hope  for  Ambleside  ;  the  place  is 

8* 


90  JOHN  RUSK  IN. 

sure  to  be  ruined  beyond  all  that  people 
imagine.  It  is  no  use  my  writing  to  the  Lon- 
don papers  on  the  matter,  because  it  merely 
centres  in  the  question,  have  they  money 
enouo-h  to  fieht  in  the  House  of  Commons? 
It  does  not  matter  what  anybody  says  if  the 
damaging  party  can  pay  expenses.  There  are 
perpetually  people  who  are  trying  to  get  up 
railways  in  every  direction,  and  as  it  now  stands 
they  unfortunately  can  find  no  other  place  to 
make  money  from.  But  it  is  no  use  attacking 
them;  you  might  just  as  well  expect  mercy 
from  a  money-lender  as  expect  them  to  listen 
to  reason."  Nor  was  his  animosity  towards 
the  promoters  in  any  way  subdued  by  the  fail- 
ure of  the  attempt  in  Parliament.  Even  the 
decoration  of  the  railway  stations  he  condemned 
as  an  impertinence  and  an  outrage  on  the  art 
of  design  that  was  disgraced  by  the  lowliness 
of  its  mission. 

But  Ruskin's  hatred  of  railways  was  not  so 
all-consuming  nor  so  sweeping  that  he  had  no 
dislike  and  contempt  left  for  that  more  recent 
form  of  mechanical  self-transport — cycling,  as  he 
proved  to  a  starded  correspondent  who  sought 
for  his  opinion,  and  apparently  his  approval,  on 
the  subject.  "I  not  only  object."  he  wrote, 
"  but  am  quite  prepared  to  spend  all  my  best 
'  bad  language  '  in  reprobation  of  bi-  tri-  4-  5-  6- 


THE   TEACHER.  91 

or  7-cycles,  and  every  other  contrivance  and 
invention  for  superseding  human  feet  on  God's 
ground.  To  walk,  to  run,  to  leap,  and  to 
dance  are  the  Virtues  of  the  human  body,  and 
neither  to  stride  on  stilts,  wriggle  on  wheels,  or 
dangle  on  ropes,  and  nothing  in  the  training  of 
the  human  mind  with  the  body  will  ever  super- 
sede the  appointed  God's  ways  of  slow  walking 
and  hard  working." 

Mr.  William  Morris  rightly  declared  that 
Ruskin  was  the  only  man  who,  during  the 
whole  nineteenth  century,  made  Art  possible  in 
England.  Dr.  Waldstein  has  placed  him  on 
an  equal  pedestal  with  Mathew  Arnold  as  an 
apostle  of  culture.  And,  further,  by  proclaim- 
ing his  service  in  combating  the  severance  of 
morality  and  economics,  in  "  killing  the  fetish  of 
the  Quartier  Latin,"  and  in  inducing  the  love 
and  study  of  nature  and  landscape-painting,  he 
has  awarded  Ruskin  the  palm  he  so  passion- 
ately sought  for — the  admission  that  he  reached 
his  goal.  In  short,  as  has  been  said,  Ruskin 
stood  midway  between  the  religious  and  scien- 
tific lines  of  thought — as  a  theistic  philosopher. 
And  it  is  claimed  for  him  that  he  inaugfurated 
the  era  of  scientific  and  methodical  art-criticism, 
and  ranged  himself  beside  Carlyle,  Emerson, 
and  Hegel  against  the  advancing  materialism  of 
the  day. 


CHAPTER  VI. 

THE  EDUCATIONIST. 

Upon  no  subject,  even  upon  art  or  railways, 
did  Ruskin  entertain  stronger  views  than  upon 
education — more  especially  upon  the  education 
of  the  very  young.  Laying  down  primarily 
that  little  children  should  be  taught  or  shown 
nothing  that  is  sad  and  nothing  that  is  ugly,  he 
protested  wath  all  his  vigour  against  the  blind 
Three  R's-system  of  all  school  education — 
particularly  that  of  the  School  Board.  And 
he  further  set  his  face  agfainst  what  he  believed 
was  the  latter-day  tendency  of  scientific  or  eco- 
nomic study  amongst  our  youth,  to  the  end  and 
conclusion  "that  their  fathers  were  apes  and 
their  mothers  winkles  ;  that  the  world  began  in 
accident,  and  will  end  in  darkness;  that  honour 
is  a  folly,  ambition  a  virtue,  charity  a  vice, 
poverty  a  crime,  and  rascality  the  means  of  all 
wealth  and  the  sum  of  all  wisdom."  As  usual, 
his  earnestness  in  asseveration  and  felicity  in 
expression  carried  him  a  little  too  far ;  but  it 
certainly  presented  his  views  with  considerable 

accuracy. 
92 


THE  EDUCATIONIST.  93 

Few  people  applied  to  him  in  vain  for 
assistance  and  advice  on  the  subject  of  school- 
teaching  ;  and  with  his  advice  there  often 
came  something  more  substantial  in  the  way 
of  materials  for  object-lessons.  The  Cork 
Hiofh  School  for  Girls  is  one  of  the  several 
establishments  which  benefited  in  this  way, 
receiving  a  gift  of  minerals  of  high  value 
accompanied  by  a  characteristic  descriptive 
catalogue.  To  Mrs.  Magnussen,  again,  Ruskin 
expressed  the  deep  interest  he  felt  in  her 
high  school  for  girls  in  Ireland,  and  besought 
her  to  "  teach  your  children  to  be  cheerful, 
busy,  and  honest;  teach  them  sewing,  music, 
and  cookery ;  and  if  they  want  bonnets  from 
Paris — why,  you'll  have  to  send  for  them," 
And  many  a  time  the  village  school  of  Conis- 
ton  has  known  his  presence  during  school 
hours,  and  reaped  advantage  and  amusement 
from  his  kindly  interference. 

As  soon  as  the  child  has  been  taught  to  learn, 
not  only  with  its  eyes  and  ears,  but  with  its  lips 
and  tongue  and  skin  (the  latter  by  the  appointed 
daily  washing,  to  say  nothing  of  "  thrashing — 
delicately — on  due  occasion"),  its  time  is  to 
be  gradually  occupied  with  the  teaching  of  the 
natural  sciences,  as  against  mere  reading  and 
writing.  Physical  science,  botany,  the  elements 
of  music,  astronomy,   and  zoology — these  are 


94  JOHN  RUSK  IN. 

the  subjects  to  be  included  in  a  system  which 
is  to  know  no  over-pressure,  and  which,  by  its 
course  of  study,  precludes  the  possibility  of 
writing  folly  for  the  attraction  of  other  infantile 
fools,  or  the  reading  of  pestilential  popular 
literature  and  "penny  dreadfuls"  to  the 
reader's  ruin.  Drawing  and  history,  accord- 
ing to  the  Ruskinian  system,  were  to  be  com- 
pulsory subjects.  The  school-house,  with 
garden,  playground,  and  cultivable  land  round 
it,  wherever  possible,  should  have  workshops 
— a  carpenter's  and  a  potter's — a  children's 
library,  where  scholars  who  want  to  read 
might  teach  themselves  without  troubling 
the  masters ;  and  "  a  sufficient  laboratory 
always,  in  which  shall  be  specimens  of 
all  common  elements  of  natural  substances, 
and  where  chemical,  optical,  and  pneumatic 
experiments  may  be  shown."  And  to  these 
subjects,  others — which  should  not  be  extras : 
"the  laws  of  Honour,  the  habit  of  Truth, 
the  Virtue  of  Humility,  and  the  Happiness  of 
Love." 

And  coming  later  to  the  ordinary  University 
course  and  University  teaching,  Ruskin  be- 
soueht  his  students  to  confine  themselves  to 
the  regular  curriculum.  But  as  for  languages 
— their  own  and  foreign — he  told  them  to 
learn   the  former  at  home,  and  the  others  in 


THE  EDUCATIONIST.  95 

the  various  countries ;  "  and,  after  they've 
learned  all  they  want,  learn  wholesomely  to 
hold  their  tongues,  except  on  extreme  occa- 
sions, in  all  languages  whatsoever." 


CHAPTER  VII. 

HIS  VIEW  OF  THINGS. 

Ruskin's  originality  and  invariable  happi- 
ness of  expression  drew,  perhaps,  undue  public 
attention  to  his  versatility  and  views  of  things 
in  general,  and  he  was  listened  to  with  pleasure 
by  adversaries,  as  by  friends  and  followers. 
His  theory  of  political  economy  was  too  ideal 
to  be  acceptable  to  the  work-a-day  world ;  yet 
his  "Time  and  Tide"  and  "Ethics  of  the  Dust" 
gained  no  small  share  of  approval  from  non- 
capitalists.  With  Palmerston,  Gladstone,  and 
Disraeli,  Ruskin  contested  for  these  opinions 
in  vigorous  conversation  ;  though,  as  he  him- 
self admitted,  with  but  little  effect.  For 
Palmerston  gently  remonstrated  with  him  ; 
Gladstone  hotly  argued,  and  Disraeli  cyni- 
cally chaffed  him:  but  Ruskin  held  on — the 
precise  attitude  that  might  have  been  expected 
from  the  character  and  dispositions  of  the  four 
men.  On  this  subject  he  remained  firm  ;  "  my 
political  teaching,"  he  said,  "  has  never  changed 
in  a  single  thought  or  word,  and,  being  that 
of  Homer  and  Plato,  is  little  likely  to  do  so, 

though    not    acceptable    to   a   country   whose 
96 


iR'ihnniiirmwiffliminnnrminHniinnffMiiiHfflmiHiininina^ 


III 


JOHN    RUSK  IN,   1866. 

FROM    A    PHOTOGRAPH    BY    ELLIOTT    A    1  RY. 


HIS   VIEW  OF  THINGS.  99 

milkmaids  cannot  make  butter,  nor  her  black- 
smiths bayonets." 

Ardent  in  all  things,  he  was  an  ardent, 
though  inactive,  politician  ;  but  he  was  strongly 
opposed  to  government  by  party,  being  con- 
vinced that  the  ablest  men  should  be  in  the 
positions  for  which  they  were  best  suited. 
"I  care  no  more  for  Mr.  D'Israeli  or  Mr. 
Gladstone  than  for  two  old  bagpipes  with 
the  drones  going  by  steam,"  he  once  wrote  ; 
"but  I  hate  all  Liberalism  as  I  do  Beelzebub, 
and,  with  Carlyle,  I  stand,  we  two  alone  now 
in  England,  for  God  and  the  Queen."  This 
is  on  all-fours  with  the  sentiment  he  once 
imparted  to  me,  and  which  at  the  time  it 
was  my  duty  to  make  known  to  the  world  : 
"  There  is  one  political  opinion  I  do  enter- 
tain, and  that  is  that  Mr.  Gladstone  is  an  old 
wind-bag,  who  uses  his  splendid  gifts  of 
oratory  not  for  the  elucidation  of  a  subject, 
but  for  its  vaporisation  in  a  cloud  of  words  " 
— a  sentiment,  he  told  me  afterwards,  which 
had  given  the  greatest  offence  to  Miss  Glad- 
stone, of  whom  he  was  so  fond,  and  now  she 
wouldn't  look  at  him !  "  I  am  not  a  Liberal 
— quite  the  Polar  contrary  of  that.  I  am, 
and  my  father  was  before  me,  a  violent  Tory 
of  the  old  school  (Walter  Scott's  school) ; " 
and  again,    "  I   am   a  violent   Illiberal,    but   it 


loo  JOHN  RUSK  IN. 

does  not  follow  that  I  must  be  a  Conserva- 
tive. I  want  to  keep  the  fields  of  England 
green  and  her  cheeks  red." 

In  one  of  his  lighter  moods  he  wrote  to  a 
friend  concerning  the  proposed  erection  of  a 
new  public  office  : — "  If  I  were  he  [the  archi- 
tect] I  would  build  Lord  P an  office  with 

all  the  capitals  upside  down,  and  tell  him  it  was 
in  the  Greek  style,  inverted,  to  express  typi- 
cally Government  by  party — up  to-day,  down 
to-morrow,"  And  on  another  occasion: — "I 
beg  of  you,  so  far  as  you  think  of  me,  not 
to  think  of  me  as  a  Tory,  or  as  in  any  wise 
acknowledging  party  principles  ; "  and,  finally, 
declaring  himself  what  amounts  to  a  hmited 
Home  Ruler,  he  piously  proclaimed  himself  a 
believer  in  "  the  minority  of  One  !  " 

There  seems  to  be  good  ground  for  the  be- 
lief that,  had  not  Art  claimed  Ruskin  for  her 
own,  his  love  of  Nature  would  have  been  di- 
verted into  scientific  channels.  Dr.  Buckland 
and  James  Forbes  had  done  much  with  him, 
and  as  he  believed  and  said  with  perfect  can- 
dour, he  might  have  become  the  first  geologist 
in  Europe.  Geology,  mineralogy,  meteorology 
— glacier  movements,  mountains,  rocks,  clouds, 
and  perspective,  birds  and  plants,  all  severally 
engaged  his  attention,  and  to  good  purpose 
enlisted  his  highest  powers.     But  for  all  that, 


HIS   VIEW  OF  THINGS.  loi 

he  hated  mathematics ;  and  having  once  learned, 
with  the  rest  of  the  children  at  the  Coniston 
school,  how  much  seven-and-twenty  pounds  of 
bacon  would  come  to  at  ninepence  farthing  a 
pound,  "with  sundry  the  like  marvellous  conse- 
quences of  the  laws  of  numbers,"  he  stopped 
the  mistress  and  diverted  the  delighted  chil- 
dren's attention  to  object-lessons  more  pictu- 
resque, and,  as  he  believed,  more  interesting  and 
useful.  Yet  his  contributions  to  science  are 
not  altogether  insignificant,  and  Mr.  Tyndall 
had  cause  to  wince  under  his  lash  when  he 
opposed  the  glacier-theory  of  James  Forbes, 
and,  as  Ruskin  himself  told  me  with  unusual 
bitterness,  "put  back  the  glacier-theory  twenty 
years  and  more — a  theory  which  had  been  de- 
cided before  that  conceited,  careless  schoolboy 
was  born !  Scientists !  "  he  cried,  "  but  not  men 
of  science.  They  are  not  students  of  science,  but 
dilettanti  in  the  enjoyment  of  its  superficial  as- 
pects. They  do  not  examine  and  analyse  the 
milk  ;  they  only  sip  at  the  cream,  and  then 
chatter  about  it.  They  are  of  the  race  that  say 
'Keltic'  for  'Celtic,'  and  '  Keramic '  for  'Ce- 
ramic,' at  once  the  makers  and  the  followers  of 
fashion  in  Science,  and  not,  as  they  should  be, 
the  servants  of  God,  and  the  humble  masters 
of  the  universe."  The  Darwinian  theory,  as  I 
have  already  said,  was  in  a  measure  hateful  to 


102  JOHN  RUSK  IN. 

him ;  yet  few  men  he  esteemed  more  than  the 
author  of  it.  To  the  last  he  remembered  with 
deHo-ht  the  visits  of  the  oreat  naturaUst  to 
Brantwood,  and  was  perhaps  not  a  httle  grate- 
ful for  the  tact  with  which  all  reference  to 
debateable  matters  was  carefully  avoided. 

In  religion  Ruskin  may  be  described  as  a 
Broad  Churchman  ;  earnest  and  pious,  but  no 
bigot,  as  the  following  passage,  extracted  from 
a  private  letter,  will  show: — "If  people  in  this 
world  would  but  teach  a  litde  less  religion  and 
a  little  more  common  honesty,  it  would  be 
much  more  to  everybody's  purpose — and  to 
God's."  As  a  child  he  was  brought  up  in  the 
Evangelical  faith,  but  soon  became  more  catho- 
lic and  indulgent,  and  looked  with  horror  on 
the  more  intolerant  attitude  of  Protestantism 
or  Puritanism,  and  with  scorn  upon  sects  and 
schisms  alike  and  their  belitding  quarrels. 
Still,  as  before  and  later,  religion  in  its  larger 
sense  was  the  forerunning  and  guiding  princi- 
ple of  his  life — the  passion  that  directed  every 
act  and  moulded  every  thought.  Love,  Faith, 
Charity,  and  Honour  were  the  four  boundaries 
of  his  Church — a  Church  which  was  broad 
enough  to  cover  every  noble  mind  and  every 
honest  heart. 


CHAPTER  VIII. 

THE  LETTER-WRITER. 

One    of    the    most    delightful    of    Ruskin's 

talents  was  that  of  letter-writing,   his  natural 

bent  for  which  was  developed  and  perfected  by 

continual  practice.     But  his  art  was  not  that  of 

the  great  literary  epistolographers.     It  aimed 

less,   in    point  of   fact,  at   literary  quality  and 

formal  composition    (though  it  did  not  less  for 

that  reason  hit  the  mark)   than  at  vivacity  of 

manner  and  frank  expression  of  his  thoughts 

as  they  took   form  in    his  brain  and   bubbled 

sparkling   and  flowing  from   his  pen — now  in 

the  ripple  of  boyish  playfulness,    now  in   the 

stiller  sweep  of  philosophic  thought,  and  now 

again   in   the   torrent  of  hot  indignation    that 

overwhelmed    his   adversaries    in    their   flood. 

To    the     public    journals    he   was    a    prolific 

correspondent,  from  the   time  when,   in    1847 

and  again  in   1853,  he  addressed  long  letters 

to  the  Times  on  the  dangers   threatening  the 

National  Gallery — to  the  dissipation  of  which 

dangers  he  was  able  long  years  afterwards  to 

testify — down  to  a  quite  recent  period.     The 

103 


I04  JOHN  RUSK  IN. 

Times,  but  particularly  the  Daily  Telegraph 
and  the  Pall  Mall  Gazette,  were  his  favourite 
newspaper  channels  of  communication  with 
the  public,  but  the  Mo7'7iing  Post,  the  Man- 
chester Exa7niner  and  Ti7nes,  the  Leeds  Mer- 
cury, the  Scotstna7i,  the  Manchester  City  News, 
the  Reader,  the  Critic,  the  Litei^ary  Gazette, 
the  Mo7tetary  Gazette,  and  other  journals  were 
selected  by  him  from  time  to  time  for  the 
exposition  of  his  views  upon  almost  every 
subject  within  the  extended  range  of  his 
philosophy.  Yet  if  he  was  a  prolific  news- 
paper letter-writer  it  must  not  be  imagined 
that  he  was  necessarily,  therefore,  a  rapid  one. 
On  the  contrary,  he  more  than  once,  to  me 
as  well  as  to  others,  remarked  upon  the  labour 
which  the  inditing  and  publishing  of  such  pro- 
ductions entailed  upon  him.  In  a  post- 
script to  a  letter  addressed  to  the  editor  of 
the  Pall  Mall  Gazette  in  1887,  Mr.  Ruskin 
wrote : — 

*'  I  have  not  written  this  letter  with  my  usual  care,  for 
I  am  at  present  tired  and  sad ;  but  you  will  enough  gather 
my  meaning  in  it ;  and  may  I  pray  your  kindness,  in  any 
notice  you  may  grant  in  continuation  of  *  Prseterita,'  to 
contradict  the  partly  idle,  partly  malicious  rumours  which 
I  find  have  got  into  other  journals,  respecting  my  state  of 
health  this  spring.  Whenever  I  write  a  word  that  my 
friends  don't  like,  they  say  I  am  crazy;  and  never  con- 
sider what  a  cruel  and  wicked  form  of  libel  they  thus  pro- 


THE  LETTER-WRITER.  105 

voke  against  the  work  of  an  old  age  in  all  its  convictions 
antagonistic  to  the  changes  of  the  times,  and  in  all  its  com- 
fort oppressed  by  them ;" 

— a  most  pathetic  and,  as  the  Editor  truly 
commented,  "  sad  undernote  of  weariness  "  in 
respect  to  a  charge  to  which  all  great  original 
thinkers  have  been  exposed  at  the  hands  of 
commonplace  people  "  from  St.  Paul  to  Gen- 
eral Gordon." 

All  these  newspaper  letters,  from  1841  up 
to  1880,  together  with  a  few  others,  were  re- 
printed in  "Arrows  of  the  Chace,"  wherein,  it 
must  be  remarked,  the  writer  asserts,  with  in- 
explicable self-contradiction,  that  most  of  them 
were  "written  hastily,"  though  he  admits  that 
they  cost  him  much  trouble.  And  he  further 
declared,  what,  indeed,  every  man  can  see  for 
himself,  that  in  these  letters,  "  designed  for  his 
country's  help,"  there  is  not  one  word  which 
"  has  been  warped  by  interest  nor  weakened 
by  fear,"  and  that  they  are  "  as  pure  from 
selfish  passion  as  if  they  were  spoken  already 
out  of  another  world." 

It  is  clear  that  letter-writing  came  with 
singular  ease  to  Ruskin,  for  it  allowed  him 
an  unconventionality  of  composition  and  ex- 
pression and  a  forcefulness  of  diction  that 
would,  perhaps,  have  been  less  permissible  in 
the  more  customary  methods  of  essay  writing. 


io6  JOHN  RUSK  IN. 

For  this  reason,  doubtless,  "  Time  and  Tide 
by  Weare  and  Tyne "  was  frankly  thrown 
into  epistolary  form,  or  left  in  it,  precisely  as 
the  five-and-twenty  letters  of  which  the  book 
is  composed  were  indited  to  Mr.  Thomas 
Dixon,  of  Sunderland;  while  "The  Elements 
of  Drawing,"  and  even  "  Fors  Clavigera,"  were 
in  like  manner  issued  in  Ruskin's  favourite 
form  of  public  address. 

Apart  from  his  letters  immediately  intended 
for  publication  in  the  newspapers,  there  were 
those  he  addressed  to  the  comparatively  un- 
known correspondents  who  sought  his  help 
and  advice  in  their  private  affairs,  or  inquired 
his  opinions  upon  every  sort  of  subject  of 
public  curiosity ;  and  those,  again,  which  he 
distributed  with  so  generous  a  hand  among 
his  private  friends  and  relations.  How  many 
of  all  these  letters  have  found  their  way  into 
print  it  is  unnecessary  to  point  out  or  inquire. 
Ruskin's  own  general  statement  that  "  I  never 
write  what  I  would  not  allow  to  be  published," 
and  his  general  declaration,  duly  printed  in  the 
newspapers,  that  all  were  free  to  publish  every 
letter  he  ever  wrote,  "so  that  they  print  the 
whole  of  them,"  was  confirmed  by  him  in  a 
characteristic  letter  which  he  wrote  to  James 
Smetham,  and  which  was  printed  in  the  fasci- 
nating volume  of  "  Letters  "  of  that  artist.     "  I 


THE  LETTER-WRITER.  107 

have  had,"  wrote  Smetham  on  one  occasion, 
"  some  kind  letters  from  Ruskin,  one  giving  me 
leave  to  print  anywhere  or  anyhow  any  opinion 
he  may  have  expressed  about  my  work  in 
private  letters,  in  bits  or  wholes,  or  how  I  like, 
and  concluding  by  a  very  characteristic  sen- 
tence :  *  I  never  wrote  a  private  letter  to  any 
human  being  which  I  would  not  let  a  bill- 
sticker  chalk  up  six  feet  high  on  Hyde  Park 
wall,  and  stand  myself  in  Piccadilly  and  say 
"I  did  it.'""  Thus  it  is  that  Ruskin  encour- 
aged a  system  of  general  publicity  which  cer- 
tainly has  done  his  reputation  no  harm,  while 
it  enlivened  the  columns  of  the  public  press 
with  a  pyrotechnic  sequence  of  letters,  delight- 
fully and  often  enough  fervently  expressed — 
contributions  for  which  newspaper-readers  felt 
themselves  duly  grateful. 

Of  the  private  letters,  the  most  notable 
collection  is  that  before,  referred  to,  which 
was  addressed  to  Miss  Beever — the  Younger 
Lady  of  Thwaite,  to  whom  the  world  is  in- 
debted for  the  charming  selection  from  Modern 
Painters  known  as  "  Frondes  Agrestes."  A 
smaller  selection  was  more  recently  published 
for  private  circulation  by  Mr.  Ellis,  the  book- 
seller— a  collection  containing  much  that  is 
pleasant  and  interesting,  bearing  chiefly  on 
Ruskin's  knowledge  and   love   of  books,   but 


io8  JOHN  RUSK  IN. 

hardly  edited  with  the  soHcitude  demanded 
by  the  reputation  of  a  great  writer.  Few  men 
declare  themselves  completely  in  their  literary 
work,  so  that  the  publication  of  their  letters 
is  always  looked  to  for  the  explanation  of 
otherwise  inexplicable  problems  presented  by 
their  character,  to  throw  light  upon  unguessed 
motives,  or  even  to  tear  from  their  face  the 
mask  that  the  heroes  have  laboured  all  their 
life  to  mould  and  wear  with  the  ease  of 
truth.  With  Ruskin  it  is  different.  His 
writings  declare  the  man  in  his  weakness  as 
in  his  strength,  simply  and  fully,  drawing  a 
careful  outline,  so  to  speak,  that  leaves  little 
to  be  filled  into  the  portrait,  and  requires  no 
further  evidence  to  enable  his  fellow-men  to 
form  their  judgment.  It  is  chiefly  confirmatory 
evidence  that  his  letters  afford — presented  with 
a  light  hand  to  fill  in  the  main  lines  laid  down 
in  hfs  books — illustrating,  developing,  and  rep- 
resenting the  author  in  a  stronger  light,  only 
a  good  deal  more  light-hearted  or  more  de- 
pressed ;  and  at  the  same  time  bringing  into 
greater  relief  the  dominating  qualities  of  charity 
and  love  which  those  who  knew  him  best  saw 
oftenest  and  esteemed  highest. 


CHAPTER   IX. 

THE  POET. 

Ruskin,  as  has  already  been  said,  was  in- 
tended for  the  Church.  His  mother — strict 
EvangeHcal  soul — devoutly  hoped  that  her 
son  would  become  a  Bishop ;  his  father 
firmly  believed  he  would  be  a  poet.  And 
though  Ruskin  belied  both  prophecies,  it  must 
be  admitted  that  he  gave  ample  ground  for 
the  paternal  conviction.  His  facility  in  verse- 
making  was  amazing,  and  from  those  tender 
years  when,  still  a  baby,  he  wrote  the  imagina- 
tive lines  beginning — 

**  Papa,  how  pretty  those  icicles  are, 
That  are  seen  so  near,  that  are  seen  so  far," 

he,  in  a  short  time,  developed  such  fluency 
that  few  writers  of  verse  of  any  age  could 
excel  him  in  the  direction  of  fatal  "facility" 
His  literary  prose  style,  as  we  have  seen,  had 
been  founded  on  the  Bible  and  Dr.  Johnson, 
tempered  by  Carlyle ;  his  poetic  Muse  was 
nourished  on  Byron,  guided  by  Wordsworth, 
and  modified  by  Scott.  As  he  himself  wrote  in 
a  tone  of  apology  to  Hogg,  the  Ettrick  Shep- 

lo  109 


no  JOHN  RUSK  IN. 

herd,  when  but  fifteen  years  of  age :  "  I  fear 
you  are  too  lenient  a  critic,  and  that  Mr.  Mar- 
shall is  in  the  right  when  he  says  I  have  imi- 
tated Scott  and  Byron.  I  have  read  Byron 
with  wonder,  and  Scott  with  delight ;  they  have 
caused  me  many  a  day-dream  and  night-dream, 
and  it  is  difficult  to  prevent  yourself  from  imi- 
tating what  you  admire.  I  can  only  say  that 
the  imitation  was  unintentional,  but  I  fear,  with 
me,  almost  unavoidable."  Yet,  to  his  infinite 
credit,  it  must  be  confessed  that  he  early  saw 
that  his  drift  into  art-criticism  carried  him  into 
the  right  stream.  Nevertheless,  although  the 
feu  sacre  burned  brightly  within  him,  although 
he  heard  on  all  sides  that  none  had  written 
such  poetic  prose  as  he,  and  although  his  sensi- 
tiveness to  nature  and  beauty  was  universally 
allowed  him,  he  soon  recognised  that,  as  with 
Lord  Lytton,  poetry  was  to  him  but  a  will-o'- 
the-wisp — to  be  wooed  and  followed,  but  never, 
like  Fata  Morgana,  to  be  seized. 

Yet,  though  he  thus  tacitly  admitted,  while 
yet  a  stripling,  that  verse  was  not  the  weapon 
with  which  he  was  to  conquer  the  recognition 
of  the  world,  he  made  no  objection  to  the  re- 
publication of  his  poems  by  Mr.  Collingwood. 
Their  issue,  in  splendid  garb,  with  many  admir- 
able facsimiles  of  the  Master's  most  beautiful 
drawings  with  pencil-point  and  brush,  will  be 


JOHN   RUSKIN,  1876. 

SKETCHED    IN   THE    NATIONAL    GALLERY    BY   GEORGES    PILOTELLE. 

{By  permission  of  Mr.  Noseda,  the  owier  of  the  copyright  of  the  etching. 

{See  /.  i8t>.) 


THE  POET.  113 

fresh  in  the  memory  of  the  reader.  It  might 
be  said,  and  not  without  truth,  that  the  pictures 
formed  the  chief  artistic  vakie  of  the  volumes ; 
for,  while  the  poems — with  all  their  pretty 
daintiness  and  occasional  power — savoured  a 
good  deal  of  the  efforts  of  the  precocious  poet, 
the  pictures  were  full  of  richness  of  fancy, 
exquisiteness  of  touch,  and  true  beauty — the 
attributes  of  natural  grenius.  The  humour 
which  distinguishes  his  unfinished  autobiog- 
raphy, "  Praeterita,"  is  often  slyly  pointed  at  his 
youthful  indiscretions — poetical  and  otherwise  ; 
but  in  his  "  Collected  Poems  "  the  verses  were 
put  forth  with  a  seriousness — almost  a  solem- 
nity— which  is  a  little  out  of  balance  with  the 
subject.  For,  while  the  verse-lover  may  smile 
in  sympathy  with  his  dainty  fancies,  or  fires, 
maybe,  with  noble  suggestions,  or  nods  his 
head  gently  in  time  to  its  musical  cadences,  the 
critic  can  but  regret  that  a  maturer  judgment 
permitted  them  to  go  forth  as  the  poetical 
works  of  a  great  man,  for  all  the  exquisite 
beauty  of  their  pictorial  accompaniments.  He 
brought  as  a  sacrifice  the  harvest  of  his  intel- 
lectual wild  oats  to  the  altar  of  public  opinion  ; 
but  it  is  doubtful  if  he  cared  for  the  verdict — if 
he  ever  knew  of  it.  As  in  other  instances,  his 
shaft  had  missed  its  aim.  Just  as  a  comedian 
yearns  for  recognition  as  an  actor  of  tragedy, 

h  10* 


114  JOHN  RUSKIN. 

SO  Ruskin  ever  sought  for  some  other  judgment 
than  that  which  an  admiring  pubHc  chose  to 
pass  upon  him.  The  people  proclaim  him  an 
art-critic,  and  he  would  be  taken  for  a  political 
economist ;  the  artists  welcome  him  as  a  writer, 
and  he  would  be  taken  for  an  art-preacher ; 
Mr.  Tyndall  respected  him  as  a  controversial- 
ist, when  he  would  be  taken  for  a  man  of 
science ;  and,  lastly,  we  find  him  applauded  as 
an  artist  when  he  would  be  taken  for  a  poet ! 
But  it  must  be  remembered  that  it  was  from 
his  young  and  hopeful  heart  that  these  poems 
chiefly  flowed,  even  when  he  set  himself — as  he 
once  amusingly  observed — "  in  a  state  of  mag- 
nificent imbecility  to  write  a  tragedy  on  a  Vene- 
tian subject,  in  which  Venice  and  love  were  to 
be  described  as  never  had  been  thought  of  be- 
fore ! "  If,  however,  for  no  other  reason  than 
that  it  is  the  frank  utterance  of  a  young  and 
gentle  spirit,  his  verse — so  sweetly,  so  nobly 
conceived — is  to  be  welcomed  beyond  its  inher- 
ent merit.  And,  as  it  fell  out,  his  song — pub- 
lished just  as  he  was  vanishing  from  the  world 
— became  in  truth  the  song  of  the  swan 


CHAPTER  X. 
RUSKIN  AND  GEORGE  CRUIKSHANK. 

There  was  no  pleasanter  phase  of  Ruskln's 
character,  as  has  been  already  said,  than  his 
charity,  dehcately  dispensed,  especially  when 
the  recipient  was  worthy  of  his  gift,  and  at  the 
same  time  claimed  his  respect.  An  example 
in  point  is  Ruskin's  connection  with  George 
Cruikshank  in  the  artist's  later  days.  The 
relation  of  the  circumstances  at  an  interesting 
period  of  their  connection  affords  a  plain  in- 
stance of  the  generosity  of  Ruskin,  no  less 
than  of  his  refusal  to  allow  his  sympathy  of 
sentiment  to  overcloud  his  faculty  of  criticism. 

Many  a  time  had  Ruskin  borne  testimony  to 
Cruikshank's  genius  as  a  designer,  as  well  as 
to  his  almost  unrivalled  skill  and  facility  as  an 
etcher. 

"If  ever  [he  wrote]  you  happen  to  meet  with  two  vol- 
umes of  Grimm's  'German  Stories,'  which  were  illustrated 
by  George  Cruikshank  long  ago,  pounce  upon  them  in- 
stantly ;  the  etchings  in  them  are  the  finest  things,  next  to 
Rembrandt's,  that,  as  far  as  I  know,  have  been  done  since 
etching  was  invented." 

And  again : — 

"5 


Ii6  JOHN  RUSKIN 

**  They  are  of  quite  sterling  and  admirable  art,  in  a  class 
precisely  parallel  in  elevation  to  the  character  of  the  tales 
they  illustrate  .  .  .  unrivalled  in  masterfulness  of  touch 
since  Rembrandt  (in  some  qualities  of  delineation  un- 
rivalled even  by  him).  To  make  somewhat  enlarged  copies 
of  them,  looking  at  them  through  a  magnifying  glass,  and 
never  putting  two  lines  where  Cruikshank  has  put  only  one, 
would  be  an  exercise  in  decision  and  severe  drawing  which 
would  leave  afterwards  little  to  be  learned  in  schools," 

Of  course,  it  is  not  only,  or  even  mainly, 
upon  the  Grimm  plates  that  Cruikshank's  repu- 
tation rests  as  an  etcher  and  a  humorist  of  the 
highest  order ;  for  in  several  of  his  caricatures 
— coarse  as  many  of  the  subjects  may  be — 
there  are  a  boldness  and  a  freedom  of  compo- 
sition and  execution  which  are  perfectly  aston- 
ishing, even  to  the  expert  connoisseur  in  these 
things.  But  it  was  always  the  Grimm  plates — 
executed  about  the  year  1824 — that  were  upper- 
most in  Ruskin's  mind.  More  than  forty  years 
later  Ruskin  conceived  an  idea,  partly  in  order 
to  be  of  use  to  Cruikshank — who  (greatly 
through  his  own  fault,  be  it  said)  never  knew 
what  assured  prosperity  meant — and  partly  to 
please  little  children,  whom  he  loved  so  well. 
This  was  to  place  before  the  little  people  a 
book  of  fairy-tales — fairy-tales  just  such  as  they 
should  be,  and  adorned  with  pictures  exactly 
fitting  the  stories.  Not  until  he  issued  "  Dame 
Wiggins  of  Lee,"  in   1885,  ^^^   ^^  even  par- 


RUSKIN  AND   GEORGE   CRUIKSHANK.       117 

tially  fulfil  his  wish;  but  in  1866  he  went  to 
considerable  trouble  to  carry  his  object  into 
execution.  On  the  27th  of  March  he  wrote  to 
his  secretary  from  Denmark  Hill : — 

"  How  curious  all  that  is  about  the  Grimm  plates.  I 
wish  you  would  ask  Cruikshank  whether  he  thinks  he  could 
execute  some  designs  from  fairy-tales — of  my  choosing,  of 
the  same  size,  about,  as  these  vignettes,  and  with  a  given 
thickness  of  etching  line  ;  using  no  fine  line  anywhere?  " 

The  reservation  was  a  wise  one,  for  the 
vigour  and  excellence  of  Cruikshank's  etched 
line  had  degenerated  sadly  as  he  reached  mid- 
dle life.  On  the  2nd  of  the  following  month, 
full  of  his  new  project,  and  fully  decided  in  his 
mind  as  to  what  he  wanted  and  meant  to  have, 
Ruskin  wrote  as^ain  : — 


& 


"  I  don't  want  to  lose  an  hour  in  availing  myself  of  Mr. 
Cruikshank's  kindness,  but  I  am  puzzled,  as  I  look  at  the 
fairy  tales  within  my  reach,  at  their  extreme  badness.  The 
thing  I  shall  attempt  will  be  a  small  collection  of  the  best 
and  simplest  I  can  find,  re-touched  a  little,  with  Edward's 
help,  and  with  as  many  vignettes  as  Mr.  Cruikshank  will 
do  for  me.  One  of  the  stories  will  certainly  be  the  Pied 
Piper  of  Hamelin — but,  I  believe,  in  prose.  I  can  only 
lay  hand  just  now  on  Browning's  rhymed  rendering  of  it, 
but  that  will  do  for  the  subject.  I  want  the  piper  taking 
the  children  to  Koppelberg  Hill — a  nice  little  rout  of 
funny  little  German  children — not  too  many  for  clearness 
of  figure — and  a  bit  of  landscape  with  the  raven  opening 
in  the  hillside — but  all  simple  and  bright  and  clear — with 
broad  lines :  the  landscape  in  '  Curdken  running  after  his 


Ii8  JOHN  RUSK  IN. 

Hat,'  for  instance — or  the  superb  bit  with  the  cottage  in 
'Thumbling  picked  up  by  the  Giant,'  are  done  with  the 
kind  of  line  I  want ;  and  I  should  like  the  vignette  as  small 
as  possible,  full  of  design  and  neat,  not  a  labour  of  light 
and  shade. 

"  I  would  always  rather  have  two  small  vignettes  than  one 
large  one.  And  I  will  give  any  price  that  Mr.  Cruikshank 
would  like,  but  he  must  forgive  me  for  taking  so  much  upon 
me  as  to  make  the  thick  firm  line  a  condition,  for  I  cannot 
bear  to  see  his  fine  hand  waste  itself  in  scratching  middle 
tints  and  covering  mere  spaces,  as  in  the  Cinderella  and 
other  later  works.  The  '  Peewit '  vignette,  with  the 
people  jumping  into  the  lake,  I  have  always  thought  one 
of  the  very  finest  things  ever  done  in  pure  line.  It  is  so 
bold,  so  luminous,  so  intensely  real,  so  full  of  humour, 
and  expression,  and  character  to  the  last  dot. 

"I  send  you  my  Browning  marked  with  the  subject  at 
page  315,  combining  one  and  two;  and,  perhaps,  in  the 
distance  there  might  be  the  merest  suggestion  of  a  Town 
Council — 3.  .  but  I  leave  this  wholly  to  Mr.  Cruik- 
shank's  feeling. 

"  Please  explain  all  this  to  him,  for  I  dare  not  write  to 
him  these   impertinences   without    more    really  heartfelt 
apology  than  I  have  time,  or  words,  to-day  to  express. 
"Ever  affectionately  yours, 

"J.    RUSKIN." 

On  the  7th  of  the  same  month  Ruskin  re- 
turned to  the  subject : — 

"I  was  so  busy  and  tired  yesterday  I  couldn't  write 
another  note.  That  is  capital  and  very  funny  about  the 
Pied  Piper.  Your  subjects  are  all  good  as  good  can  be, 
but  I  doubt  we  can't  afford  more  than  one  to  each  story, 
and  the  final  one  is  here  the  best.  Please  tell  me  of  any 
other  stories  and  subjects  that  chance  to  you." 


RUSKIN  AND   GEORGE   CRUIKSHANK.       119 

Two   days   later,   with  the  jovial  spirit  of  a 

Cheeryble  Brother  strong  within  him,  he  wrote 

again : — 

"I  do  not  know  anything  that  has  given  me  so  much 
pleasure  for  a  long  time  as  the  thought  of  the  feeling  with 
which  Cruikshank  will  read  this  list  of  his  committee. 
You're  a  jolly  fellow — you  are,  and  I'm  very  grateful  to 
you,  and  ever  affectionately  yours, 

"J.    RUSKIN. 

"  I  enclose  Cruikshank's  letter,  which  is  very  beautiful. 
I  think  you  must  say  ;^ioo  (a  hundred)  for  me." 

And  on  the  i6th  of  April  he  wrote  : — 

"Letter  just  received — so  many  thanks.  It's  delightful 
about  Cruikshank." 

So,  everything  being  settled,  the  artist  went 
steadily  to  work,  and  in  the  month  of  July  fol- 
lowing, Ruskin  wrote  with  enthusiasm  : — 

"I  can  only  say  to-day  that  I'm  delighted  about  all 
these  Cruikshank  matters,  and  if  the  dear  old  man  will  do 
anything  he  likes  more  from  the  old  Grimms  it  will  be 
capital.  Edward  and  Morris  and  you  and  I  will  choose 
the  subjects  together." 

Meanwhile  he  saw  and  became  enthusiastic 
over  other  work  of  the  great  etcher's,  and  once 
more  wrote  to  his  secretary,  on  the  2nd  of 
September,  to  tell  him  so  : — 

"  I  am  wholly  obliged  to  you  for  these  Cruikshanks. 
The  Jack  Shepherd  \sic\  one  is  quite  awful,  and  a  miracle 
of  skill  and  command  of  means.  The  others  are  all  splen- 
did in  their  way ;  the  morning  one  with  the  far-away  street 


120  JOHN  RUSK  IN. 

I  like  the  best.  The  officials  with  the  children  are  glorious 
too;  withering,  if  one  understands  it.  But  who  does,  or 
ever  did  ?  The  sense  of  loss  and  rarity  of  all  good  art — 
until  we  are  better  people — increases  in  us  daily." 

A  few  days  later  he  suggested  : — 

"Wouldn't  Cruikshank  choose  himself  subjects  out  of 
Grimni  ?  If  not,  to  begin  with,  the  old  soldier  who  has 
lost  his  way  in  a  wood,  comes  to  a  cottage  with  a  light  in 
it  shining  through  the  trees.  At  its  door  is  a  witch  spin- 
ning, of  whom  he  asks  lodging.  She  says,  '  He  must  dig 
her  garden,  then.'  " 

At  this  time  a  missing  etching  was  returned 
to  him,  and  he  wrote  : — 

"I  forgot  to  thank  you  for  the  Cruikshank  plate  of 
fairies.  I  lost  it  out  of  the  book  when  I  was  a  boy,  and 
am  heartily  glad  to  have  it  in  again.  The  facsimiles  are 
most  interesting,  as  examples  of  the  m-measurably  little 
things  on  which  life  and  death  depend  in  work — a  fatal 
truth — forced  on  me  too  sharply,  long  ago,  in  my  own  en- 
deavours to  engrave  Turner." 

The  facsimiles  referred  to  here  were  an 
extraordinary  series  of  reproductions — "for- 
geries "  some  collectors  chose  to  declare  them 
— which  a  French  artist  made  of  the  Grimm 
plates.  So  fine  are  they  that  it  is  only  by  one 
or  two  minor  points,  as  well  as  by  the  colour 
of  the  ink  in  which  they  are  printed,  that  the 
difference  between  the  genuine  plates  and  the 
copies  can  be  detected.  And  this,  it  must  be 
remembered,   was  long   before   the  means  of 


RUSKIN  AND   GEORGE   CRUIKSHANK.       121 

photographing  a  design  upon  copper  was  dis- 
covered. Disappointment,  however,  was  soon 
to  follow.  The  plates  were  delivered ;  but 
brought  the  following  charming  letter  from  Rus- 
kin — a  letter  as  truthful  in  its  criticism  as  it  is 
gentle  and  happy  in  its  choice  of  expression  : — 

*'  The  etching  will  not  do.  The  dear  old  man  has 
dwelt  on  serious  and  frightful  subjects,  and  cultivated  his 
conscientiousness  till  he  has  lost  his  humour.  He  may 
still  do  impressive  and  moral  subjects,  but  I  know  by  this 
group  of  children  that  he  can  do  fairy  tales  no  more. 

"I  think  he  might  quite  well  do  still  what  he  would 
feel  it  more  his  duty  to  do — illustrations  of  the  misery  of  the 
streets  of  London.  He  knows  that,  and  I  would  gladly 
purchase  the  plates  at  the  same  price. 

"  Ever  affectionately  yours,  J.  Ruskin. 

"  Give  my  dear  love  to  Mr.  Cruikshank,  and  say,  if  he 
had  been  less  kind  and  good,  his  work  now  would  have 
been  fitter  for  wayward  children,  but  that  his  lessons  of 
deeper  import  will  be  incomparably  more  precious  if  he 
cares  to  do  them.  But  he  must  not  work  while  in  the 
country." 

Disappointed  as  he  was,  Ruskin  determined 
that  the  artist  should  not  share  his  mortifica 
tion,  and  on  the  19th  November  he  wrote  : — 

"I  am  going  to  write  to  Rutter  [Ruskin's  homme 
d'affaires]  to  release  Cruikshank  from  the  payment  of  that 
hundred — he  gave  some  bonds  which  may  be  useful  to 
him,  and  I  shall  put  the  hundred  down,  as  I  said  I  would, 
to  the  testimonial." 

The   sequel   of    the   plates    is    not   without 


122  JOHN  RUSKIN. 

interest  as  having  drawn  from  Ruskin  a  later 
criticism  on  Cruikshank's  work  which  may  fitly 
be  recorded  here.  As  a  Cruikshank  collector, 
I  was  aware  that  the  two  plates  of  the  Pied 
Piper  and  the  Old  Soldier  had  disappeared 
from  Ruskin's  possession  ;  and  having  further 
ascertained  that  some  of  his  late  secretary's 
effects  had  long  before  found  their  way  to  the 
hands  of  various  dealers,  I  applied  myself  to 
discover  them,  if  possible.  By  good  fortune  I 
lighted  upon  them,  nearly  twenty  years  after 
they  were  executed  and  years  after  they  were 
"  lost,"  and  I  had  the  pleasure  of  placing  them 
in  the  possession  of  their  rightful  owner.  In 
a  letter  acknowledging  the  receipt  of  them  he 
wrote : — 

"  It  was  precisely  because  Mr.  Cruikshank  could  not  re- 
turn to  the  manner  of  the  Grimm  plates,  but  etched  too 
finely  and  shaded  too  much,  that  our  project  came  to  an 
end.  I  have  no  curiosity  about  the  plates  ...  I 
never  allow  such  things  to  trouble  me,  else  I  should  have 
vexation  enough.  There's  a  lovely  plate  of  "  Stones  of 
Venice  ^^— folio  size — lost  these  twenty  years  ! 

**  Ever  faithfully  yours, 

"  J.  Ruskin. 


>> 


Writing  a  few  days  later,  on  the  21st 
January,  1884,  i^  response  to  a  suggestion  of 
mine  that  his  latest  criticism  on  Cruikshank 
might  be  interesting  to  the  public,  he  wrote : — 


RUSK  IN  AND   GEORGE   CRUIKSHANK.       123 

"It  is  a  pleasure  to  me  to  answer  your  obliging  letter 
with  full  permission  to  use  my  note  on  Cruikshank  in  any 
way  you  wish,  and  to  add,  if  you  care  to  do  so,  the  expres- 
sion of  my  perpetually  increasing  wonder  at  the  fixed  love 
of  ugliness  in  the  British  soul  which  renders  the  collective 
works  of  three  of  our  greatest  men — Hogarth,  Bewick, 
and  Gruikshank — totally  unfit  for  the  sight  of  women  and 
children,  and  fitter  for  the  furniture  of  gaols  and  pigstyes 
than  of  the  houses  of  gentlemen  and  gentlewomen. 

**  In  Cruikshank  the  disease  was  connected  with  his 
incapacity  of  colour ;  but  Hogarth  and  Bewick  could  both 
paint. 

"It  may  be  noticed  in  connection  with  the  matter  that 
Gothic  grotesque  sculpture  is  far  more  brutal  in  England 
than  among  the  rudest  continental  nations;  and  the  singu- 
lar point  of  distraction  is  that  such  ugliness  on  the  Conti- 
nent is  only  used  with  definitely  vicious  intent  by  de- 
graded artists ;  but  with  us  it  seems  the  main  amusement 
of  the  virtuous  ones  ! 

"  Ever  faithfully  yours, 

"J.    RUSKIN." 

There  can  be  no  doubt  that  Ruskin's  con- 
demnation of  the  ugliness  or  extreme  impro- 
priety in  some  of  the  works  of  the  artists 
he  named  is  entirely  just.  But  that  must  be 
borne  in  mind  which  Ruskin,  in  his  impatience 
of  everything  that  was  vile  or  ugly,  unfairly 
ignored — that  the  works  he  denounces  were 
produced,  with  all  their  coarseness  and  vulgarity 
of  sentiment  and  colour,  to  suit  the  taste  and 
satisfy  the  demand  of  cmr  great-grandfathers, 
with  whom  grossness  often  passed  for  wit  and 


124  JOHN  RUSK  IN. 

extravagance  for  humour ;  and  that  it  was  their 
very  aptitude  for  distortion  and  for  investing 
their  subject  with  "brutality"  which  enabled 
such  lesser  lights  as  Williams,  Woodward,  and 
Bunbury  to  take  equal  rank  in  our  ancestors' 
estimation  with  giants  such  as  Gillray,  Row- 
landson,  and  "  the  inimitable  George  Cruik- 
shank." 


CHAPTER   XI 

BRANTWOOD. 

Brantwood,  the  chosen  lake-side  home  of 
Ruskin  during  the  last  quarter-century  of  his 
life,  occupies  one  of  the  most  favoured  spots  in 
all  England.  Set  in  the  background  of  a  half- 
encircling  wood  of  exquisite  grace  and  mystic 
beauty,  as  seen  in  the  green  half-light  of  its 
tranquil  shade,  and  protected  from  the  east 
winds  by  the  open  moorland  that  stretches  away 
still  further  to  the  rear,  it  faces  a  long  slope  of 
lawn  that  sweeps  down  to  Coniston  Water's 
edge. 

Behind — the    moor,    with   the    water   of    its 

overflowing   wells    running    swiftly   down    the 

rocks  with  all  the  fuss  of  a  real   cascade ;  and 

the  exalted  rock  of  "  Naboth,"   rising  on  the 

outskirts  of  the  estate,  which  Ruskin  loved  to 

climb  that  he  might  gaze  upon  a  wider  view  ; 

and  then,  still  higher,  the  great  expanse  of  green 

and  purple  moor  which  game-birds  haunt  down 

to  the  very  limits  of  the  wood   itself.     And  at 

its  foot  the  fishing  pond  and  the  soft  green  turf 

of  the  natural  amphitheatre. 

II*  125 


126  JOHN  RUSK  IN. 

In  front — the  narrow  lake,  sparkling  in  the 
sun  and  blue  as  the  waters  of  the  Rhone  or  of 
Thun,  or  grey  and  ruffling  to  the  breeze  that 
sweeps  swiftly  across  the  lake,  tossing  Mr. 
Severn's  sailing  boats  as  they  lie  at  anchor 
close  by  the  little  creek,  or  thwarting  them  and 
their  skipper  as  they  seek  their  moorings  on  a 
squally  day.  Then  the  rising  banks  beyond  oi 
broken  green,  with  white-faced  houses  blinking 
behind  their  trees,  and  the  quiet,  grey  village 
nestling  away  to  the  right ;  and  the  Old  Man 
of  Coniston  himself,  towering  above  the  smaller 
hills  that  close  like  guards  around  his  knees. 

To  the  left,  the  road  that  skirts  the  shore 
loses  itself  quickly  among  the  trees ;  but  the 
full  length  of  the  lake  itself  is  seen  away  down 
to  where  the  water  gleams  beyond  Peel  Island 
live  miles  and  more  away. 

Upon  such  a  view,  with  its  range  of  hills 
draped  in  hanging  cloud  and  clinging  mists,  or 
clear  cut  against  the  summer  sky,  would  Rus- 
kin  stand  and  gaze,  peering  beneath  his  hand 
when  the  light  was  strong,  many  times  a  day  ; 
never  tiring  of  the  ever-changing  scene,  and 
finding  in  it  a  reminiscence  of  his  beloved  Alps, 
and  deriving  real  consolation  when  his  days  of 
travel  were  complete. 

In  the  midst  of  this  land  of  delight  Brant- 
wood    stands,  once   the   house   of  Mr.   W.   J. 


a 

'/• 

< 

■— < 

— 

V5 

:i 

Q 

Z 

H 

rrl 

UJ 

w 

2 

td 

r/; 

O 

oi 

D 

^, 

l; 

^^' 

Cii 

^ 

< 

^ 

Q 

— 

O 

/C 

O 

5-, 

OS 

— H 

r^ 

2 

< 

BRANTWOOD.  129 

Linton,  the  great  wood-engraver.  How  Ruskin 
acquired  it,  he  has  himself  amusingly  told: 
"Then  Brantwood  was  offered  me,  which  I 
bought,  without  seeing  it,  for  fifteen  hundred 
pounds  (the  fact  being  that  I  have  no  time  to 
see  things,  and  must  decide  at  a  guess,  or  not 
act  at  all).  Then  the  house  at  Brantwood — a 
mere  shed  of  rotten  timber  and  loose  stone — had 
to  be  furnished.  .  .  The  repairs  also  prov- 
ing worse  than  complete  rebuilding.  ,  .  I 
got  myself  at  last  seated  at  my  tea-table,  one 
summer,  with  my  view  of  the  lake — for  a  net 
four  thousand  pounds  all  told.  I  afterwards 
built  a  lodge,  nearly  as  big  as  the  house,  for  a 
married  servant,  and  cut  and  terraced  a  kitchen 
garden  cut  out  of  the  '  steep  wood ' — another 
two  thousand  transforming  themselves  thus 
into  '  utilities  embodied  in  material  objects.' " 
So  that  he  estimated  the  value  in  1877  at  five 
thousand  pounds.  But  since  then  Brantwood, 
with  its  new  buildings,  has  grown  steadily  up 
the  hill,  and  wells  have  been  sunk  and  the 
place  improved  with  new  rooms  south  and 
north  and  east,  until  it  distinctly  "  rambles," 
comfortably  and  cheerfully,  more  than  ever  it 
"  rambled  "  before. 

Entering  from  the  private  road,  which  after- 
wards disappears  through  an  archway  beneath 
the  house  and  the  outbuildings,  the  visitor  finds 


I30  JOHN  RUSK  IN. 

himself  in  a  square  hall,  remarkable  chiefly 
for  being  hung  with  cartoon-drawings  by  Mr. 
Burne-Jones,  and  other  pictures  besides.  On 
the  left  lies  the  old  dining-room,  where  visi- 
tors were  permitted  to  smoke  after  the  Pro- 
fessor had  retired  for  the  night ;  in  front  the 
passage  leading  to  the  large  dining-room — 
specially  constructed  with  a  great  number  of 
windows  for  the  sake  of  the  view — on  the  walls 
of  which  hang  those  portraits  of  Ruskin  by 
Northcote,  to  which  reference  will  be  made 
later  on.  Here  also  are  the  portraits  of  Rus- 
kin's  parents  by  the  same  artist,  that  of  the 
father  being  incontestably  the  finer  of  the  two ; 
and  above  the  fireplace  that  splendid  Titian, 
"A  Doge  of  Venice,"  which  played  the  promi- 
nent part  of  dumb  witness  in  the  trial  of 
"  Whistler  verszis  Ruskin ; "  and  beside  it  a 
most  interesting  autographic  portrait  of  Turner, 
duly  inscribed  sua  manu  and  wrought,  with  all 
its  delightful  errors  of  draughtsmanship,  when 
the  artist  was  but  sixteen  years  of  age. 

Doubling  sharply  to  the  right  after  entering  the 
street  door  is  the  drawing-room.  Bookcases 
full  of  best  editions  of  the  best  books — his 
own  and  others' — and  displaying  notable  bind- 
ings, stand  against  the  walls,  Scott's  novels  and 
historical  and  critical  works  in  quite  a  variety 
of  sizes  appearing  to  preponderate.     Charac- 


JOHN    RUSKIN,  1S77. 

FROM   THE    BUST    BY    BENJAMIN    CRESWICK. 


{Sec  p.  18S.) 


BRANTWOOD,  133 

teristically  enough,  one  edition  of  his  works 
does  not  bear  the  surname  upon  their  richly- 
bound  backs,  but  "Sir  Walter"  only,  suggest- 
ing the  familiar  reverence  in  which  Ruskin 
held  the  author  whose  "every  word,"  he  in- 
sisted, should  be  included  among  the  "  Hun- 
dred Best  Books."  Exquisite  examples  of 
Front's  pencil  drawings,  of  Burne-Jones  ("  Fair 
Rosamund"),  and  of  Ruskin's  own  beautiful 
studies  of  the  interior  of  St.  Mark's  at  Venice 
— one  of  them,  perhaps,  the  most  important  of 
all  his  artistic  productions,  together  with  his 
copy  of  Botticelli's  "Zipporah" — adorn  the 
walls  as  well.  Cases  of  shells  in  infinite 
variety,  of  great  rarity  and  equal  beauty,  and 
a  few^  minerals  of  various  formation  reveal  that 
other  side  of  Ruskin's  taste  and  knowledgfe 
which  those  forget  who  thought  and  talked  of 
him  only  as  an  art-critic.  On  the  mantelpiece 
are  superb  examples  of  cloisonne  enamel,  whose 
rich  blue  rivals  the  colour  of  the  finest  products 
of  Nankin.  And  all  around  are  books  and 
ornaments  which  the  connoisseur  must  seek 
out  and  appreciate  for  himself,  for  they  are  not 
displayed  or  thrust  forward  as  is  commonly 
the  case  in  treasure-houses  such  as  this. 
And  they  serve,  perhaps,  to  emphasize  the  fact 
— so  remarkable  and  striking  at  first — that  the 

furniture  throughout  the  house  has  no  flavour 

12 


134  JOHN  RUSK  IN. 

— no  taint,  I  should  say — of  "high  art."  No 
particular  attempt  is  made  at  artistic  beauty : 
no  spindle-legs  make  proclamation  of  "culture," 
nor  Morris-paper  of  "aesthetics."  The  furni- 
ture, for  the  most  part,  belonged  to  Mr.  Ruskin 
pere ;  and,  sound  and  solid  as  the  day  it  was 
made,  seeming  to  bear  its  date  of  "  1817  " 
carved  on  its  face  as  the  year  of  its  creation. 

Beside  the  drawing-room — and,  like  it,  over- 
looking the  lake — is  the  study,  where  so  many 
happy  working  hours  of  the  Professor  were 
passed.  Here,  about  him,  were  many  of  his 
most  loved  possessions.  Beside  the  doorway 
stands  his  great  terrestrial  globe  ;  above  it,  and 
flanking  the  door  on  either  hand,  several  fine 
Turner  water-colours.  On  the  right,  at  the  end 
of  the  room,  is  the  fireplace,  and  above  it  a 
Madonna  and  Child,  one  of  the  most  exquisite 
examples  of  the  faience  of  Lucca  della  Robbia, 
"  fashioned  by  the  Master's  own  hand,  and  ab- 
solutely perfect,"  as  Ruskin  said  the  first  time  I 
saw  it.  Here,  beside  the  heardi  and  next  to  the 
window,  was  the  Professor's  favourite  corner. 
Here  he  would  sit  in  his  old-fashioned,  high- 
backed  chair,  with  a  small  table  before  him,  on 
which  he  would  have  a  couple  of  books  or  so, 
or  his  writing  materials,  and  always  glasses  of 
flowers ;  and  from  them  he  would  ever  and 
again  raise  his  eyes  and  gaze  wistfully  or  in  ad- 


7: 
T.      > 

"7. 


i 


BRANTWOOD.  137 

miration  over  the  lake  or  at  the  varying  skies, 
which,  as  he  once  said,  "  I  keep  bottled  like 
my  father's  sherries."  Bookcases  abound,  and 
presses  and  cabinets.  In  the  first  low  press 
stretchinof  across  the  room  is  that  wonderful 
collection  of  Turner  drawings  too  precious  to 
be  allowed  to  hang  upon  the  walls.  Framed 
and  hermetically  sealed,  they  are  slid  upright 
into  grooves  as  plates  are  slid  into  the  rack  by 
the  scullery-maid.  Further  on  is  the  writing- 
desk  proper,  and  behind  it  that  wonderful  huge 
press  that  holds  half  the  lions  of  Brantwood. 
Below  are  the  mineral-cabinets.  One  series  of 
drawers  contains  nothing  but  opals.  Pulling 
out  one  in  which  lumps  of  stone,  veined  or 
plastered  with  large  masses  of  dark-blue  opal, 
"There!"  said  the  Professor,  "  never  before,  I 
verily  believe,  have  such  gigantic  pieces  of  opal 
been  seen — certainly  not  pieces  that  possess 
that  lovely  colour,  I'm  very  strong  in  stones," 
he  went  on,  "and  this  collection  of  agates  is 
the  finest  in  the  kingdom."  In  another  series 
are  the  crystals,  and  in  yet  another  rich  speci- 
mens of  gold  in  every  condition  in  which  it  has 
been  found ;  and  so  forth  and  so  forth  through- 
out the  whole  extent  of  the  oreat  nest  of 
drawers. 

Above  is  a  collection,  almost  unmatched,  of 

splendid  books  and  manuscripts  of  all  periods^ 

12* 


138  JOHN  RUSK  IN. 

of  special  interest  on  their  own  account,  and 
sometimes  on  that  of  previous  possessors.  The 
engrossed  mss.  of  the  tenth,  twelfth,  and  thir- 
teenth centuries  are  of  exceptional  beauty. 
"I  know  of  no  stronger  proof  of  the  healthy 
condition  of  the  Church  at  that  time,"  said 
Ruskin,  as  he  showed  me  the  books  with  pride, 
fingering  them  with  loving  familiarity,  yet  some- 
times, I  thought,  with  a  sort  of  easy  indifference, 
•'  than  the  evidence  of  these  books,  when  they 
used  to  write  their  psalm-books  so  beautifully 
and  play  with  their  initial  letters  so  freely  and 
ardstically.  Of  course,  the  faces  in  all  such 
manuscripts  are  very  badly  drawn,  because  the 
illuminators  were  sculptors  rather  than  ardsts, 
in  our  sense  of  the  word." 

Transcending:  in  interest  all  the  more  modern 
volumes  are  the  original  Scott  manuscripts 
of  several  of  the  Wave rley  Novels — of  "The 
Fortunes  of  Nigel,"  "The  Black  Dwarf," 
"Woodstock,"  "St.  Ronan's  Well,"  and^Pev- 
eril  of  the  Peak."  "  I  think,"  he  said,  taking 
down  one  of  these  well-cared-for  volumes, 
"  that  the  most  precious  of  all  is  this.  It  is 
'Woodstock.'  Scott  was  writing  this  book 
when  the  news  of  his  ruin  came  upon  him. 
He  was  about  here,  where  I  have  opened  it. 
Do  you  see  the  beaudful  handwridng  ?  Now 
look,  as  I  turn  over  the  pages  towards  the  end. 


BRANTWOOD.  139 

Is  the  writing-  one  jot  less  beautiful  ?  Are  there 
more  erasures  than  before?  That  assuredly 
shows  how  a  man  can,  and  should,  bear  adver- 
sit)\"  For  these  mss.,  as  for  the  quintessence  of 
Scott  himself,  Ruskin  had  the  profoundest  rever- 
ence and  love,  and  he  was  ever  on  the  watch  to 
increase  his  collection.  One  occasion  that  did 
arise  became  a  very  sore  recollection  to  him,  for 
leaving  an  unrestricted,  but  presumably  discre- 
tionary, limit  with  his  friend  and  bookseller, 
Mr.  F.  S.  Ellis,  he  was  doomed  to  disappoint- 
ment as  an  ultra-fancy  price  was  reached. 
"  I've  been  speechless  with  indignation,"  he 
wrote  to  him,  "  since  you  let  go  that  '  Guy 
Mannering'  MS."  And  again,  later  on  :  "What 
on  earth  do  you  go  missing  chance  after  chance 
like  that  for  ?  I'd  rather  have  lost  a  catch  at 
cricket  than  that  '  St.  Ronan's.'  .  .  .  Seri- 
ously, my  dear  Ellis,  I  do  want  you  to  secure 
every  Scott  manuscript  that  comes  into  the 
market.  Cai^te  blanche  as  to  price — I  can  trust 
your  honour ;  and  you  may  trust,  believe  me, 
my  solvency."  But  the  "  St.  Ronan's  "  was  not 
lost  for  good,  for  in  due  time  it  became  one 
of  the  five  Scott  mss.  in  the  famous  study  at 
Brantwood, 

The  first  floor  is  leached  by  a  stairway 
parallel  with  the  dining-room  passage.  Its  walls 
are  hung — as  are  most  of  the  rooms  and  cor- 


HO  JOHN  RUSK  IN.  ^ 

rifiors — with  pictures  and  drawings  of  great 
interest:  a  noble  canvas,  unfinished,  by  Tin- 
toret,  and  drawings  by  Prout,  Ruskin  (one  in 
particular  very  Proutish),  and  others.  Above 
the  study  is  the  guest-room,  known  as  the 
"turret-room,"  with  its  Turners  and  its  Prouts, 
and  especially  delightful  for  the  look-out  it 
affords  round  three  points  of  the  compass  by 
day,  and  by  night  for  the  splendid  view  of  the 
starlit  sky.  At  the  other  end  of  the  corridor  is 
the  room,  situated  over  the  drawing-room,  of 
Mr.  and  Mrs.  Arthur  Severn,  and  between  the 
two  the  bedroom  occupied  by  the  Professor. 
So  small,  so  unassuming,  one  would  say  it  was 
the  least  important  in  the  house.  In  front  of 
its  single  window,  which  lights  it  well,  stands 
the  low  table ;  on  the  left  wall  a  bookcase  with 
its  precious  volumes  and  missals — one  of  which, 
I  believe,  belonged  to  Sir  Thomas  More — and 
on  the  right  the  wash-hand-stand,  the  fireplace, 
and  the  little  wooden  bedstead.  The  last- 
named,  with  the  doorway,  occupies  nearly  the 
whole  wall  facing  the  window ;  and  the  little 
room,  as  a  whole,  with  its  plain  furniture  and 
plainer  chintz,  seems  rather  the  retreat  of  an 
anchorite  than  the  sanctum  sanctorum  of  the 
man  whose  taste  was  unsurpassed  in  England, 
and  whose  love  of  beauty  and  daintiness  was 
keen  and  insatiable.     But  it  is  in  the  wonderful 


^.  li 


< 


> 
o 

p>     < 
O     .__ 

:r     is 


/5        ?        ^ 


W 

D 


is 


i5 


c 
z 


BRANTWOOD  143 

Turners  which  paper  the  room  that  its  glory 
lies — drawings,  every  one  a  masterpiece,  that 
so  glow  in  their  white  mounts  and  frames  of 
gold  with  all  the  colour  and  fancy  and  exquisite- 
ness  of  touch  and  the  magic  of  distance,  that 
they  have  long  been  famous  in  the  land. 

"  Look  around  at  them,"  said  Ruskin,  with- 
out a  shadow  of  the  enthusiasm  of  the  collector, 
but  with  the  quiet  confidence  of  the  connois- 
seur, when  he  took  me  up  for  the  first  time  to 
his  bedroom  to  act  the  showman  to  his  treas- 
ures. "There  are  twenty  of  Turner's  most 
highly-finished  water-colours,  representing  his 
whole  career,  from  this  one,  when  he  was  quite 
a  boy,  to  that  one,  which  he  executed  for  me. 
There  is  not  one  of  them  which  is  not  perfect 
in  every  respect.  Now  here  is  what  is  proba- 
bly the  most  beautiful  painting  that  William 
Hunt  ever  did,  and  it  hangs  among  the  Turners 
like  a  brooch — with  that  drawing  of  my  father's 
above  it.  I  hold  this  to  be  the  finest  collection 
of  perfect  Turner  drawings  in  existence,  with 
perhaps  a  single  exception." 

At  right  angles  to  the  principal  corridor  runs 
another  which  leads  to  the  newer  portions  of 
the  house — to  the  rooms  of  the  younger  mem- 
bers of  the  family,  to  the  schoolroom  of  the 
little  ones,  with  its  window  built  out  for  the 
view's    sake,    to    Mr.    Arthur    Severn's   large 


144  JOHN  RUSKIN. 

Studio  and  the  greater  play-room.  Thence  ac- 
cess most  easily  had  to  that  lodge  which  Ruskin 
built  in  the  grounds,  "  nearly  as  big  as  the 
house  for  a  married  servant,"  and  which  later 
contained  Miss  Severn's  own  little  temple  of 
ease.  And  about  the  whole  place  there  is  that 
air  of  prosperity  and  comfort  and  taste,  though 
not  of  luxury  nor  display,  which  might  be  ex- 
pected in  such  a  home — an  air  of  peace,  happi- 
ness, and  bright  contentment,  of  artistic  and 
intellectual  activity. 


CHAPTER  XII. 

"THE  ANGEL  IN  THE  HOUSE." 

To  Ruskln's  love  of  feminine  society,  and 
his  profound  respect  and  admiration  for  the 
sex,  justice  has  already  been  done.  But  al- 
though he  knew  well  many  of  the  most  distin- 
guished and  accomplished  women  of  the  day, 
it  was  in  his  own  home  that  Ruskin  found  the 
truest  sympathy,  the  warmest  affection,  and, 
perhaps,  the  most  efficient  aid — in  the  person 
of  his  cousin  and  adopted  daughter,  Mrs. 
Arthur  Severn.  It  was  in  1864,  a  month 
after  old  Mr.  Ruskin  died,  that  that  lady 
first  shed  her  gentle  light  upon  his  house- 
hold, and  soon  became,  what  she  ever  con- 
tinued to  be,  his  Angel  in  the  House.  How 
his  mother  yearned  for  companionship  after 
her  husband's  death,  and  how  she  "  provi- 
dentially" secured  the  affection  and  the  society 
of  her  little  kinswoman — Joan  Agnew — Ruskin 
has  himself  told  with  equal  simplicity  and  grace 
in  that  last  chapter  of  "Prseterita"  gratefully 
devoted  to  "Joanna's  Care."  "I  had  a  notion 
she  would  be  '  nice,'  and  saw  at  once  that  she 

G        i  13  145 


146  JOHN  RUSKIN. 

was  entirely  nice,  both  in  my  mother's  way  and 
mine ;  being  seventeen  years  old.  And  I  very 
thankfully  took  her  hand  out  of  her  uncle's  and 
received  her  in  trust,  saying — I  do  not  remem- 
ber just  what.  .  ."  And  later  he  continues : 
"  Nor  virtually  have  she  and  I  ever  parted 
since.  I  do  not  care  to  count  how  long  it  is 
since  her  marriage  to  Arthur  Severn,  only  I 
think  her  a  great  deal  prettier  now  than  I  did 
then ;  but  other  people  thought  her  extremely 
pretty  then,  and  I  am  certain  that  everybody 
felt  the  guileless  and  melodious  sweetness  of 
the  face."  And  he  goes  on  to  describe  how, 
"almost  on  our  threshold,"  her  first  conquest 
was  made,  for  Carlyle  rode  up  the  front  garden 
and  stayed  the  whole  afternoon,  and  dined; 
and,  later  on,  paid  "  some  very  pretty  com- 
pliments" to  the  account  of  Miss  Joan  Ruskin 
Agnew. 

No  memoir  of  Ruskin.  however  brief,  can 
omit  mention  of  the  influence  for  good  that 
Mrs.  Severn  exercised  upon  Ruskin's  life. 
She  had  gone  to  stay  with  Mrs,  Ruskin  at 
Denmark  Hill  for  seven  days,  while  Ruskin 
went  to  Bradford — and  stayed  for  seven  years. 
And  when  her  kinswoman  died  it  was  with  one 
hand  in  hers,  while  the  son  held  the  other. 
Not  only  did  she  bring  lightness  into  the  house, 
and  filled  the  character  of   Dame  Durden  as 


"THE  ANGEL  IN  THE  HOUSE."  147 

delightfully  and  as  satisfactorily  as  ever  Miss 
Esther  Summerson  did  for  Mr.  Jarndyce,  but 
she  helped  the  Professor  in  his  mineralogical 
studies  and  arrangements.  She  led  him — as  he 
himself  has  admitted — to  a  fuller  understanding 
of  his  beloved  Scott  and  of  Scottish  genius  ;  and 
she  widened  his  knowledge  and  appreciation  of 
music. 

It  was  with  great  glee,  and  with  full  sense  of 
paternal  responsibility,  that  just  two  years  after 
her  arrival  under  his  mother's  roof  Ruskin 
undertook  to  pilot  Lady  Trevelyan,  her  niece 
— Miss  Constance  Hilliard — and  his  own  charge 
— Miss  Agnew — for  a  voyage  through  Italy. 
"Constance  Hilliard,"  wrote  Ruskin — she  be- 
came Mrs.  W.  H.  Churchill  later — "  nine  years 
old  when  I  first  saw  her  there,  glittered  about 
the  place  in  an  extremely  quaint  and  witty  way, 
and  took  to  me  a  little,  like  her  aunt.  After- 
wards her  mother  and  she  .  .  .  became 
important  among  my  feminine  friendships." 
And  so  it  fell  out  that  Ruskin  undertook  to 
travel  with  them  to  Italy ;  but  the  war  between 
Prussia  and  Austria  fell  out,  too,  and  the  plans 
had  to  be  radically  altered.  Concerning  this 
journey  and  annotating  it,  are  a  number  of 
Ruskin' s  letters  to  his  private  secretary  which 
lie  before  me  as  I  write  ;  and  from  them  I 
quote  some  of  the  most  interesting  passages. 


148  JOHN  RUSK  IN. 

The  tour  had  been  carefully  mapped  out.  The 
travellers  left  in  the  last  week  of  April,  1866, 
and  the  first  letter  is  as  follows  : — 

"Paris,  27th  April,  1866. 

"  We  are  getting  on  nicely.  My  address  will  be,  Poste 
Restante,  Vevay,  Canton  Vaud,  Suisse.  Send  me  as  little 
as  you  possibly  can.  Tie  up  the  knocker — say  I'm  sick — 
I'm  dead.  (Flattering  and  love-letters,  please,  in  any 
attainable  quantity.  Nothing  else.)  Necessary  business  in 
your  own  words,  if  possible,  shortly,  as  you  would  if  I  was 
really  paralytic,  or  broken-ribbed,  or  anything  else  dread- 
ful. And  after  all  explanation  and  abbreviation  don't  ex- 
pect any  answer  till  I  come  back.  But,  in  fact,  I've  a  fair 
appetite  for  one  dinner  a  day ;  my  cousin  likes  two,  but  I 
only  carve  at  one  of  them.  Tell  Ned  this.  The  Conti- 
nent is  quite  ghastly  in  unspeakable  degradations  and 
ill-omenedness  of  ignoble  vice  everywhere." 

Then  Lady  Trevelyan,  the  ill-fated  com- 
panion of  their  journey,  fell  ill  and  detained 
them,  first  in  Paris  and  again  in  Neufchatel, 
whence,  on  the  1 3th  of  May,  there  came : 

"I  am  entirely  occupied  to-day  by  the  too  probably 
mortal  illness  of  one  of  the  friends  I  am  travelling  with, 
but  I  may  be  yet  more  painfully  so  to-morrow.  Please 
post  enclosed,  and  say  to  everybody  whom  it  may  concern 
that  that  portrait  of  Mr.  Mawkes  is  unquestionably  Turner 
by  himself,  and,  on  the  whole,  the  most  interesting  one  I 
know.  I  gave  Mr.  Mawkes  a  letter  to  this  effect  six 
months  ago,  or  more." 

Four  days  later  Ruskin  wrote  the  news  of 
Lady  Trevelyan's  death,  which,  together  with 


MRS.  AKTIIUR    []0.\S    RUSKIX)    SEVERN. 

FROM    THK    I'ORTKAIT    IN    COLOURKD    CHALK    liY    JOSEPH    SEVERN. 


"THE  ANGEL   IN   THE  HOUSEr  151 

the  war  in  Italy,  would  probably  alter  all  his 

plans.     Then  a  move  was  made  to  Thun  ;  and 

from  the  lake-side  Ruskin  wrote  the  following 

characteristic  note : — 

"Thun,  2 1  St  May. 

"I've  had  a  rather  bad  time  of  it  at  Neufchatel,  what 
with  Death  and  the  North  Wind — both  Devil's  inventions, 
as  far  as  I  can  make  out ;  but  things  are  looking  a  little 
better  now,  and  I  have  had  a  lovely  three  hours'  walk  by 
the  lake  shore,  in  cloudless  calm,  from  five  to  eight  this 
morning,  under  hawthorn  and  chestnut — here  just  in  full 
blossom,  and  among  other  pleasantnesses  too  good  for 
mortals,  as  the  North  Wind  and  the  rest  of  it  are  too  bad. 
We  don't  deserve  either  such  blessing  or  cursing,  it  seems 
to  poor  moth  me." 

Interlaken  was  the  next  place  of  sojourn. 
On  the  26th  May  Ruskin  wrote : — 

"All  you've  done  is  right,  except  sending  Mr.  Henry 
Vaughan  about  his  business.  He  is  a  great  Turner  man. 
Please  write  to  him  that  he  would  be  welcome  to  see  any- 
thing of  mine,  but  I  would  rather  show  them  to  him  my- 
self. Also,  don't  take  people  to  Denmark  Hill,  as  it  would 
make  my  mother  nervous.  I'm  pretty  well;  my  two 
ducklings  all  right." 

Four  days   later   he  writes   from   the  same 

place : — 

"  I  have  answered  the  Vice  Chancellor,  saying  I'll  come 
after  the  long  vacation.  If  I  ought  to  come  before  he 
must  tell  me  by  a  line  to  Denmark  Hill.  .  .  I  have 
had  long  letters  to  write  to  Lady  Trevelyan's  sister,  and 
I'm  much  tired.  Joan  is  well  and  Constance,  and  there's 
no  one  else  in  the  inn  just  now,  and  the  noise  they  make 


152  JOHN  RUSK  IN. 

in  the  passages  is  something — I  was  going  to  say  '  unheard 
of/  but  that's  not  quite  the  expression." 

Another  letter  from  Interlaken,  in  which  he 
says :  "  I  am  pretty  well,  much  as  usual ;  fresh 
air  seems  to  do  me  little  good,  and  foul  little 
harm ;"  and  another  from  Meyringen  announces 
the  arrival  of  the  party  at  Lucerne,  whence  he 
writes  delightedly,  on  Friday,  22nd  June: 

"That  'nice,  quiet  Miss  Hilliard  '  was  dancing  quad- 
rilles with  an  imaginary  partner — (a  pine  branch  I  had 
brought  in  to  teach  her  botany  with  !) — all  round  the 
breakfast  table  so  long  yesterday  morning  that  I  couldn't 
get  my  letters  written,  and  am  all  behind  to-day  in  conse- 
quence. .  .  I've  got  Georgie's  letter.  I'm  too  good- 
for-nothing  to  answer  such  divine  things." 

Business  communications  followed  from 
Schaffhausen  and  Berne,  chiefly  with  regard 
to  a  certain  wandering  letter  which  was  "  start- 
ing in  pursuit  of  me  to  Interlaken  and  thence- 
forward. It  will  catch  me  at  Vevay  at  last,  I 
believe,  after  making  its  own  Swiss  tour."  And 
the  writer  continues  :  "  I  am  sadly  tired — dis- 
gusted with  the  war  and  all  things.  I  have 
been  very  anxious  about  the  two  children  since 
I  was  left  alone  with  them,  but  it  would  have 
disappointed  them  too  cruelly  to  bring  them 
home  at  once." 

The  4th  of  July  found  Ruskin  and  "his 
ducklings"  at  Geneva,  whence  he  wrote : — 


JOHN    RUSKIN,   iSSo. 

FROM    THE    BUST    HV    SIK    EDGAR    liOEHM,  HART.,  R.A. 

(See  /.  jgo.) 


''THE  ANGEL  IN   THE  HOUSE."  155 

"  My  little  daisy — Miss  Hilliard — is  wild  to-day  about 
jewellers'  shops,  but  not  so  wild  as  to  have  no  love  to 
send  you.  So  here  you  have  it,  and  some  from  the  other 
one,  too,  though  she's  rather  worse  than  the  little  one, 
because  of  a  new  bracelet.  They've  been  behaving  pretty 
well  lately,  and  only  broke  a  chair  nearly  in  two  this 
morning  running  after  each  other." 

Returning  by  way  of  Interlaken,  Mr.  Ruskin 
and  his  wards  came  back  to  Denmark  Hill, 
after  an  absence  of  about  three  months,  while 
the  great  war  was  proceeding  and  preventing 
them  from  reaching  Italy  ;  but  the  time,  as  may 
be  seen  in  "  Prseterita,"  was  occupied  by  a 
journey  of  such  delight  that  Mrs.  Severn  has 
declared  that  it  was  one  of  the  most  pleasurable 
memories  of  her  youthful  days. 

It  was  in  1870  that  Miss  Agnew  was  married 
to  Mr.  Arthur  Severn,  the  eminent  water-colour 
painter,  and  became  the  "  Joan  Ruskin  Severn  " 
whose  name  is  so  closely  linked  with  that  of 
the  Professor  as  his  most  trusted  friend  and 
counsellor,  and  the  cheerful  companion  and 
guardian  of  his  age.  He  always  rejoiced  in 
her  company,  and  when  he  chanced  to  be  ab- 
sent for  a  brief  time  he  would  send  her  daily 
letters  of  cheery  import ;  and  the  delight  with 
which  he  watched  her  family  grow  up  around 
him  (for  he  would  not  spare  her  even  when  she 
was  married — especially  when  she  was  married) 
equalled  the  pleasure  he  found  in  the  friend- 


156  JOHN  RUSK  IN. 

ship  of  her  husband.  But  to  the  last,  I  think, 
he  was  always  a  little  regretful  that,  although 
she  had  married  the  husband  whom  he  wel- 
comed cordially  as  the  companion  best  fitted 
for  "his  darling,"  he  could  not  overbear  the 
individuality  of  the  artist  to  the  point  of  making 
him  in  all  respects  a  true  disciple  of  the 
Ruskinian  theory  of  painting. 


CHAPTER  XIII. 
HOME-LIFE  AT   CONISTON. 

But  for  the  occasional  access  of  illness  in 
his  later  years,  and  the  periodical  intrusion  of 
worrying  attacks  or  harassing  troubles — as  the 
sound  of  battle  murmurs  from  afar,  though 
sometimes,  too,  of  persecution  nearer  home — 
the  life  of  Ruskin  in  his  retreat  at  Coniston 
was  one  of  sweet  peace  and  luxurious  quiet. 
He  lived,  in  a  measure,  by  rote,  ordering  his 
life  carefully — both  the  time  for  work  and  the 
time  for  leisure. 

Never,  indeed,  was  man  more  methodical  in 
his  work  than  Ruskin,  nor  more  precise  and 
regular  in  obedience  to  the  rules  he  laid  down 
for  his  guidance.  From  first  to  last  his  work- 
ing hours  were  from  seven  in  the  morning  till 
noon,  and  for  no  consideration  would  he  ex- 
ceed his  limit.  Within  those  five  daily  hours 
all  his  work  was  produced — not  only  his  books, 
but  his  business  and  private  correspondence. 
Work  in  the  afternoon  was  by  himself  for- 
bidden, unless  it  took  the  form  of  reading,  and 
never  under  any  circumstances,  save  in  the  ex- 
tremely exceptional  case  of  an  important  note, 

14  157 


158  JOHN  RUSK  IN. 

would  he  write  letters  in  the  eveninof.  On  one 
occasion,  at  a  time  when  he  was  busily  engaged 
upon  one  of  his  books,  he  wrote  to  a  gentleman 
who  afterwards  became  his  confidential  secre- 
tary for  a  time : 

**  I  am  ashamed  of  myself  when  I  look  at  the  date  of 
your  letter,  but  it  arrived  when  I  was  far  from  well  and  in 
a  press  of  work,  and  as  I  had  only  to  answer  with  sincere 
thanks — and  I  find  my  gratitude  will  always  keep — I  put 
off  replying  till  I  am  ashamed  to  reply." 

And  nine  years  later,  in  May,  1865,  writing 
to  the  same  person,  who  was  now  about  to 
enter  on  his  secretarial  duties  and  occupy  the 
position  of  friendship  he  afterwards  forfeited, 
he  wrote : — 

"  I  could  not  even  read  your  letter  last  night.  I  was  at 
dinner,  and  I  never  answer  or  read  letters  after  *  business 
hours ' — I  never  see  anybody — my  best  friends — but  by 
pre-engagement.  Ask  the  Rossetti's  or  anyone  else  who 
knows  me.  I  can't  do  it,  having  my  poor,  little,  weak 
head  and  body  divided  enough  by  my  day's  work.  But  do 
not  the  less  think  me — ever  faithfully  yours." 

Those  only  who  saw  Ruskin  at  home  can 
claim  properly  to  have  known  him.  There 
within  his  own  atrium  was  little  sign  of  the 
dogmatism  that  characterised  his  appearance 
in  the  lecture-room,  or  the  shyness  that  so 
often  attended  him  in  the  drawing-room  of 
society  and  touched  his  deportment  with  a  sus- 


HO  ME- LIFE  AT  CONISTON.  159 

picion  oi  gaucherie.  Writing  of  him  in  1855, 
James  Smetham  said  :  "  I  wish  I  could  re- 
produce a  good  impression  of  John  for  you, 
to  give  you  the  notion  of  his  'perfect  gentle- 
ness and  lowliness.'  .  .  He  is  different  at 
home  from  that  which  he  is  in  a  lecture  be- 
fore a  mixed  audience,  and  there  is  a  spiritual 
sweetness  in  the  half-timid  expression  of  his 
eyes."  As  he  was  in  1855  so  he  was  in  1893: 
keen  in  respect  to  every  subject  which  he  dis- 
cussed, modest  in  respect  to  those  in  which  he 
thought  his  interlocutor  the  better  versed,  and 
uncompromisingly  emphatic  when  well  upon 
his  own  ground.  •'  Old  Mrs.  Ruskin,"  said 
Smetham,  "  puts  '  John '  down,  and  holds  her 
own  opinions,  and  flatly  contradicts  him  ;  and 
he  receives  all  her  opinions  with  a  soft  rever- 
ence and  gentleness  that  is  pleasant  to  wit- 
ness." And  so  he  remained  to  the  end — 
opinionated,  undoubtedly,  as  he  had  a  right 
to  be,  but  gentle  and  considerate  with  his 
friends,  as  he  had  before  been  filially  rever- 
ential to  his  mother. 

With  his  life  at  Denmark  Hill,  Ruskin  made 
the  world  sufficiently  acquainted  in  his  writings. 
At  Brantwood  his  life  was  necessarily  of  a 
more  tranquil  order,  and,  perhaps,  more  in 
accordance  with  the  habits  of  a  country  squire. 
In  weather  that  was  "  too  fine  and  lovely  to 


i6o  JOHN  RUSK  IN. 

think  of  rascals  in,"  as  he  wrote  to  me  once 
apropos  of  certain  artistic  troubles  that  were 
brewing  in  London,  he  would  climb  the  hills 
or  walk  along  the  lake-side,  wander  over  the 
moor  or  cut  away  the  underwood ;  or  he 
would  romp  with  Mrs.  Severn's  youngest 
children,  or  "  play  cricket "  (more  properly 
battledore  and  shutdecock)  with  the  elder 
ones.  For  " cricket,"  indeed,  "  Di  Pa"  (as  he 
was  fondly  love-named)  was  in  great  request; 
but,  in  truth,  he  was  no  great  hand  at  the 
sport,  and  his  protest  to  Mr.  Ellis  that  he 
would  rather  have  missed  a  catch  at  cricket 
than  that  Scott  manuscript  must  be  taken 
rather  as  a  bit  of  humorous  self-criticism  than 
as  serious  judgment  of  his  powers  at  the  game. 
He  was  a  tireless  walker,  and  almost  to  the 
last  he  would  ramble  for  hours  during  the  day, 
attended  by  his  valet,  Baxter,  or  leaning  on 
Mrs.  Severn's  arm,  when  the  weather  per- 
mitted, and  the  keen  air  threatened  him  with 
neither  neuralgia  nor  chilblains. 

Until  the  latter  years  of  his  life  he  loved 
to  read  Scott  in  the  evening,  and  the  family 
was  expected  to  sit  round  and  listen  while 
he  rendered  one  or  other  of  the  Waverley 
Novels  with  that  completeness  of  realisation 
that  few  could  equal.  He  would  modify  his 
voice    for   the  various    characters,  and   would 


HOME-LIFE  AT  CONISTON.  i6i 

revel  in  the  Scottish  accent,  which  he  gave  to 
perfection.  As  age  began  to  tell  upon  him 
he  would  sometimes  drop  asleep  for  a  moment 
or  two  in  the  middle  of  a  chapter ;  but  on 
awaking  with  a  guilty  start  he  would  neverthe- 
less continue  the  appointed  reading  just  as  if 
nothing  had  happened. 

On  the  occasion  of  the  visit  to  which  I  have 
before  referred,  the  Scott-reading  days  were 
over.  Ruskin  no  longer  took  his  meals  with 
the  family,  but  alone  in  his  study ;  partly  be- 
cause, in  accordance  with  the  doctor's  mandate, 
he  ate  very  slowly,  and  partly  because  he  found 
that  the  lively  interest  he  took  in  the  conversa- 
tion had  a  deleterious  effect  upon  his  digestive 
processes.  He  would  take  an  early  breakfast 
in  bed,  comfortably  propped  by  pillows  and 
warmly  wrapped  in  his  dressing-gown,  down 
the  front  of  which  his  grey  beard  flowed  with 
patriarchal  dignity.  He  would  then  dress  and 
descend  to  the  study,  when,  after  another  break- 
fast, he  would  go  out  until  a  half-hour  before 
luncheon  time.  Then,  after  resting  for  a  time, 
he  would  sally  forth  again  ;  and,  on  returning,  he 
would  sit  and  think,  or  read.  In  the  course  of 
reading  he  would  often  annotate  a  book  ;  and  I 
remember  the  amusement  with  which  it  was  re- 
marked that  an  author's  declaration  of  what  he 
could  "  plainly  see  "  had  called  forth  a  marginal 
/  14* 


1 62  JOHN  RUSK  IN. 

note  of  "  you  owl !  "  After  dinner  the  Professor 
— or  "  Coz,"  as  he  was  usually  spoken  of  by  Mrs. 
Severn  in  her  own  house — would  come  into  the 
drawing-room  and  ensconce  himself  in  his  chair, 
with  that  "back-cuddling"  posture  that  was 
peculiar  to  him.  Then,  as  he  sipped  at  his  cup 
of  coffee,  and  afterwards  at  his  glass  of  port, 
the  chess-table  was  brought  out,  and  the  Pro- 
fessor and  Mr.  Arthur  Severn,  or  the  visitor, 
would  settle  down  to  a  game.  For,  as  it  has  been 
said,  Ruskin  passionately  loved  a  game  of  chess. 
He  had  been  a  master  of  it,  and  played  with 
great  rapidity  and  considerable  brilliancy.  At 
one  time  he  was  a  constant  visitor  to  the  Mas- 
kelyne  and  Cooke  entertainment,  where  on  at 
least  one  occasion  he  took  a  hand  in  the  rubber 
with  "  Psycho  ; "  and  whenever  a  new  chess- 
playing  automaton  made  a  public  appearance 
he  would  endeavour  to  try  conclusions  with  it. 
Indeed,  it  was  a  matter  of  pride  to  him  that  he 
had  obtained  more  than  one  victory  over  the 
famous  player,  "  Mephisto,"  at  the  time  when 
it  was  performing  at  the  Crystal  Palace  with 
considerable  eclat. 

Towards  the  end  of  his  life  he  would  rather 
listen  than  talk,  and  was  readier  to  be  amused 
than  to  amuse.  Nevertheless  he  entered  keenly 
into  the  subject  of  conversation,  and  his  blue 
eyes  flashed  intelligence  even  when  he  preferred 


HOME-LIFE  AT  CONISTON.  163 

to  maintain  silence.  Yet  he  would  talk,  and 
talk  well,  if  the  humour  took  him.  Thus,  on 
the  last  evening  of  my  latest  visit  he  was,  I  re- 
member well,  more  than  usually  conversational, 
and  in  his  brightest  humour.  The  subject  of 
birds  was  mooted,  and  then  he  fell  a-thinking. 
"  Ah  !  "  he  said,  with  his  quaint-sounding  r-less 
articulation,  *'  I  have  made  a  great  mistake. 
I  have  wasted  my  life  with  mineralogy,  which 
has  led  to  nothing.  Had  I  devoted  myself  to 
birds,  their  life  and  plumage,  I  might  have  pro- 
duced something  worth  doing.  If  I  could  only 
have  seen  a  humming-bird  fly,"  he  went  on  with 
a  wistful  smile,  "  it  would  have  been  an  epoch 
in  my  life !  Just  think  what  a  happy  life  Mr. 
Gould's  must  have  been — what  a  happy  life  ! 
Think  what  he  saw  and  what  he  painted.  I  once 
painted  with  the  utmost  joy  a  complete  drawing 
of  a  pheasant — complete  with  all  its  patterns, 
and  the  markings  of  every  feather,  in  all  its 
particulars  and  details  accurate.  It  seems  to  me 
an  entirely  wonderful  thing  that  the  Greeks, 
after  creating  such  a  play  as  '  The  Birds,'  never 
went  further  in  the  production  of  any  scientific 
result.  You  remember  that  perfectly  beautiful 
picture  of  Millais' — '  The  Ornithologist ' — the 
old  man  with  his  birds  around  him  ? — one  of  the 
most  pathetic  pictures  of  modern  times."  And 
thus  he  talked  on  during  the  evening,  on  one 


l64  JOHN  RUSK  IN. 

or  other  of  his  favourite  subjects,  until,  at  half- 
past  ten,  Mrs.  Severn  rose  without  a  word  and 
gently  took  his  arm  to  escort  him  to  his  bed- 
room door.  He  submitted  with  a  loving  smile  ; 
he  gently  pressed  his  visitor's  hand  in  both  of 
his,  and  saying  jocularly,  "  Good  night,  old 
'un,"  to  Mr.  Arthur  Severn,  and  merrily,  "  Good 
night,  piggy-wiggy,"  to  one  of  the  young 
ladies,  the  old  man  moved  with  genial  dignity 
to  the  door  and  through  it  made  a  slow  and 
stately  exit. 


CHAPTER  XIV. 

THE  PORTRAITS  OF  RUSKIN. 

It  is  not  a  little  interesting  to  see  what  man- 
ner of  man  was  he  who  had  but  to  put  his  pen 
to  paper  to  set  the  whole  art-world  by  the  ears  ; 
he  kindled  our  admiration  for  his  literary  ex- 
cellences even  while  amusing  us  by  his  originality 
and  his  quaintness,  startling  us  with  the  bitter- 
ness of  his  scorn,  with  the  heat  of  his  eloquence, 
and  the  gall  of  his  contempt  and  ridicule,  tick- 
ling us  with  the  delicacy  of  his  banter,  or  some- 
times even  with  the  error  of  his  parti pris,  and 
charming  us  with  the  wealth,  beauty,  and  poetry 
of  his  diction.  How  did  his  appearance,  ex- 
ternal and  physical,  impress  him  who  had 
formed  his  own  conception  of  the  author  seen 
through  his  own  writings?  Truth  to  tell,  the 
first  sight  was  a  little  disappointing.  It  has 
often  been  said  that  with  Lord  John  Russell, 
Dr.  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes,  and  many  more, 
he  shared  the  distinction  of  beinof  one  of  the 
great  little  men  of  his  day;  but  this  is  certainly 
not  founded  upon  fact.     Mrs.  Arthur  Severn's 

testimony  on  this  point  is  conclusive.    "  I  grant, 

165 


1 66  JOHN  RUSK  IN. 

alas  !  "  she  wrote  early  in  1891,  "  that  in  the  last 
ten  years  he  has  stooped  so  much  that  he  has 
shrunk  into  what  might  be  considered  by  some 
people  a  little  man  ;  but  about  twenty-five  years 
ago  I  should  certainly  have  called  him  much 
above  the  average  height.  And  as  a  young  man 
he  was  well  over  five  feet  ten  inches — indeed, 
almost  five  feet  eleven  ;  and  people  who  knew 
him  then  would  have  called  him  tall !  "  This 
evidence,  incontrovertible  by  itself,  is  yet  con- 
firmed by  Dr.  Furnivall's  preface  to  Mr.  Mau- 
rice's little  book.  "  Ruskin,"  he  says,  "  was  a  tall 
slight  fellow,  whose  piercing  and  frank  blue  eye 
lookt  through  you  and  drew  you  to  him."  Thus, 
thoueh  the  sliehtness  of  his  build  reduced  the 
weight  of  his  figure  to  litde  more  than  ten  stone 
of  humanity,  such  was  the  brilliancy  of  the  con- 
versationalist that  nothing  remained  but  a  com- 
manding magnetic  personality,  the  sweetness 
of  whose  merry,  fascinating  smile,  and  the  viva- 
cious, deeply  sympathetic  expression  of  whose 
bright  blue  eyes  removed  at  once  all  sense  of 
size  or  comparative  diminutiveness. 

It  is,  perhaps,  to  be  deplored  that  the  head 
and  features  of  "the  Professor"  were  not  more 
often  recorded  than  is  the  case.  Mr.  G.  F. 
Watts,  who  has  painted  a  prodigious  number 
of  the  most  eminent  men  of  the  day,  never 
sought  to  execute  a   portrait  of  Ruskin — "it 


JOHN   RUSKTN,  18S2. 

FROM   A    I'HOTOCKAl'U    I'.Y    HAKR/.UU. 


{Sec-  /.  jOg.) 


THE  PORTRAITS   OF  RUSKIN.  169 

would  have  been  impossible  for  me  to  attempt 
it,"  said  he,  for  "  I  should  have  felt  paralysed  in 
Ruskin's  presence."  Several  artists  of  distinc- 
tion have  set  those  features  on  canvas,  moulded 
them  in  clay,  and  carved  them  in  marble ;  but 
it  is  rather  through  the  photographer  that  they 
will  live,  with  all  the  thousand  and  one  changes 
of  expression  and  humour  that  no  painter  or 
sculptor  could  hope  to  seize  so  as  to  give  a 
complete  representation  of  the  man.*  More- 
over, Ruskin  had  no  special  love  for  being 
reproduced  :  paradoxical  as  it  may  sound,  his 
lack  of  vanity  in  respect  to  his  own  features 

*  As  late  as  1887  Mr.  Ruskin  wrote  to  me  that  "  no 
photograph  gives  any  of  the  good  in  me,"  and  he  was 
himself  more  pleased  with  the  accurate  truth  than  with 
the  obliging  amiability  of  the  camera.  When  the  Queen 
asked  Chalon,  the  miniaturist,  if  his  beautiful  art  would 
not  be  killed  by  photography,  then  newly-invented,  the 
Academician  replied,  with  a  complacent  bow  :  "  Madame, 
photography  cannot  flattere."  This,  in  a  measure,  Ruskin 
felt  too,  and,  I  think,  a  little  resented.  But  he  was  en- 
tirely pleased  with  Mr.  Barraud's  portraits  of  himself,  which 
he  declared  were  "  the  first  done  of  him  that  expressed  what 
good  or  character  there  was  in  him  for  his  work. ' '  The  plate 
of  himself  standing  by  a  tree-trunk  was  taken  when  he  was 
in  one  of  his  more  frivolous  moods.  Young  ladies  and 
professional  beauties,  he  said,  were  taken  beneath  palm- 
branches,  or  leaning  gracefully  against  a  tree,  and  for  that 
playful  reason  he  selected  the  pose — very  awkward  for  a 
man  of  such  natural  grace  of  movement  as  he  was — shown 
in  the  photograph  reproduced  on  page  195. 
H  15 


I70  JOHN  RUSK  IN. 

Struck  me  once,  when  we  were  talking  on  this 
subject,  as  savouring  not  a  little,  but  not  un- 
pleasantly, of  that  very  weakness.  Yet,  on  the 
other  hand,  he  certainly  entertained  no  strong 
objection  to  sit  for  his  portrait — an  objection 
which  in  some  men  amounts  to  an  absolute 
superstition.  Isaac  D'Israeli  keenly  observes 
in  his  "Curiosities  of  Literature":  "  Marville 
justly  reprehends  the  fastidious  feelings  of 
those  ingenious  men  who  have  resisted  the 
solicitations  of  the  artist  to  sit  for  their  por- 
traits. In  them  it  is  sometimes  as  much  pride, 
as  it  is  vanity  in  those  who  are  less  difficult  in 
this  respect.  Of  Gray,  Fielding,  and  Akenside 
we  have  no  heads  for  which  they  sat ;  a  cir- 
cumstance regretted  by  their  admirers  and 
by  physiognomists,"  But  here,  by  the  way, 
D'Israeli  was  wrong,  for  Akenside  did  sit  for 
his  portrait  to  Pond  in  1754,  and  it  was 
engraved  in  mezzotint  by  Fisher  in  1772. 

Certainly,  Ruskin's  father  had  no  such  preju- 
dices and  scruples,  and  when  his  son  was  not 
more  than  three  and  a  half  years  old  he  em- 
ployed James  Northcote,  R.A.,  to  paint  a  por- 
trait of  the  child.  This  charming  picture,  the  size 
of  life,  is  well  known  by  reputation  to  readers 
of  "  Fors  Clavigera  "  and  of  the  opening  chapter 
of  "  Praeterita."     Let  Mr.  Ruskin  himself  speak  : 

"The    portrait    in     question     represents    a 


THE  PORTRAITS  OF  RUSK  IN.  171 

very  pretty  child  with  yellow  hair,  dressed 
in  a  white  frock  like  a  girl,  with  a  broad 
light-blue  sash  and  blue  shoes  to  match  ;  the 
feet  of  the  child  wholesomely  large  in  pro- 
portion to  its  body,  and  the  shoes  still  more 
wholesomely  large  in  proportion  to  the  feet. 
These  articles  of  my  daily  dress  were  all 
sent  to  the  old  painter  for  perfect  realisation  ; 
but  they  appear  in  the  picture  more  remark- 
able than  they  were  in  my  nursery,  because 
I  am  represented  as  running  in  a  field  at 
the  edge  of  a  wood,  with  the  trunks  of  its 
trees  stripped  across  in  the  manner  of  Sir 
Joshua  Reynolds ;  while  two  rounded  hills,  as 
blue  as  my  shoes,  appear  in  the  distance,  which 
were  put  in  by  the  painter  at  my  own  request, 
for  I  had  already  been  once,  if  not  twice,  taken 
to  Scotland,  and  my  Scottish  nurse  having 
always  sung  to  me  as  we  approached  the 
Tweed  or  Esk — 

'  For  Scotland,  my  darling,  lies  full  in  thy  view, 
With  her  barefooted  lasses,  and  mountains  so  blue,* 

the  idea  of  distant  hills  was  connected  in  my 
mind  with  approach  to  the  extreme  felicities 
of  life,  in  my  Scottish  aunt's  garden  of  goose- 
berry bushes,  sloping  to  the  Tay.  But  that, 
when  old  Mr.  Northcote  asked  me  (little 
thinking,    I   fancy,   to  get  any  answer  so   ex- 


172  JOHN  RUSK  IN. 

plicit)  what  I  would  like  to  have  in  the  dis- 
tance of  my  picture,  I  should  have  said  'blue 
hills'  instead  of  'gooseberry  bushes,'  appears 
to  me — and  I  think  without  morbid  tendency  to 
think  overmuch  of  myself — a  fact  sufficiently 
curious,  and  not  without  promise  in  a  child  of 
that  age." 

Of  this  picture  there  are  two  versions,  the 
first  the  life-size  portrait  hanging  in  Brant- 
wood  ;  and  the  other  an  admirable  reduced 
copy  of  it,  at  Mr.  Arthur  Severn's  house  at 
Heme  Hill — the  place  which  belonged  at  one 
time  to  the  Professor's  father,  and  which  his 
own  writings  have  endeared  to  all  Ruskin- 
dom.  How  far  this  portrait  is  an  accurate 
likeness  it  is  impossible  to  say,  but  there  is  a 
manifest  similarity  between  it  and  the  pret- 
tily-conceived allegorical  subject  by  the  same 
artist  which  represents  the  child  naked,  with  a 
faun  or  satyr — or,  as  Mr.  Ruskin  himself  calls 
him,  "  a  wild  man  of  the  woods  " — extracting  a 
thorn  from  the  foot  of  the  baby-shepherd. 
There  is  no  missins:  the  resemblance  between 
the  running  child  and  the  poor  half-averted, 
panic-stricken,  little  face.  This  picture,  Mr. 
Ruskin  tells  us,  was  painted  at  the  special 
request  of  old  Northcote,  who  had  previously 
been  so  greatly  charmed  with  the  quaint  repose 
and  excellent  sitting  of  the  little  model. 


THE  PORTRAITS  OF  RUSK  IN.  173 

Assuming  that  the  first-named  portrait  gives 
a  fair  impression  of  the  child,  we  see  young 
John  Ruskin  the  possessor  of  a  fine  intellectual 
head,  quite  exceptional  in  one  so  young,  with 
singularly  beautiful  blue  eyes,  and  a  mouth  of 
great  sensibility.  Playing  happily  in  the  green 
fields  "among  the  lambs  and  the  daisies,"  he 
reveals  the  same  love  of  nature  which  has 
always  been  his  strongest  passion  from  first 
to  last.  We  may  safely  take  it  that  the  like- 
ness is  a  orood  one,  for  the  artist  was  one  of 
the  best  portrait-painters  of  his  day ;  and 
although  he  greatly  affected  history-painting, 
sacred  as  well  as  profane,  portraiture  was  his 
speciality.  By  this  time,  however,  Northcote 
was  a  man  greatly  advanced  in  years,  of  whom 
Charles  Westmacott,  in  his  "  Pindaric  Ode," 
issued  in  1824,  had  written — 

"  Northcote,  the  veteran,  let  me  praise. 
For  works  of  past  and  brighter  days." 

His  star  was  manifestly  in  the  descendent, 
and  only  one  of  his  works  was  afterwards 
publicly  shown  in  Somerset  House,  where  the 
Royal  Academy  then  held  its  court.  Yet 
Ruskin  always  thought  well  of  the  painter, 
although  he  has  written  so  little  about  him  in 
his  works.  Showing  me  the  artist's  portrait 
of    Mr,    Ruskin,    senior,    which   hangs    in    the 

IS* 


174  JOHN  RUSK  IN. 

dining-room  at  Brantwood,  and  which  at  once 
recalls  something  of  Reynolds's  "  Banished 
Lord"  to  the  memory  of  the  beholder,  the 
Professor  expressed  his  gratification  that  his 
father  "  had  the  good  taste  and  the  good 
sense  to  have  his  portrait  painted  by  so  clever 
an  artist,"  Neither  of  these  portraits  by 
Northcote  was  ever  exhibited  in  the  Royal 
Academy. 

We  now  come  to  the  year  1842,  when  Mr, 
George  Richmond,  R,A,,  painted  the  full- 
length  water-colour  for  Mr.  Ruskin's  father. 
At  that  time  the  young  graduate  was  not  yet 
famous.  He  had  distinguished  himself  at  Ox- 
ford ;  he  had  proved  himself  a  born  artist,  by 
the  charming  drawings  he  had  produced  under 
the  tutorship  of  Copley  Fielding  and  J,  D. 
Harding  ;  he  had  shown  himself  something  of 
a  poet — a  "minor"  one,  at  least — by  the 
verses,  instinct  with  feeling  and  imagination, 
which  he  had  contributed  to  a  magazine ;  a 
scientist,  by  the  manner  in  which  he  treated 
subjects,  geological,  mineralogical,  meteorologi- 
cal, and  other,  as  already  recorded,  in  the  pages 
of  Loudon's  Magazme  of  Natural  History  and 
other  learned  periodicals  ;  and  an  inventor,  by 
his  "cyanometer" — an  instrument  for  meas- 
uring the  depth  of  blue  in  the  sky.  He 
had  fairly  tested  his   keen  critical    faculty,   as 


THE  PORTRAITS  OF  RUSK  IN.  173 

the  author  of  the  series  of  papers  on  the 
"  Poetry  of  Architecture,"  and  a  work  destined 
to  be  much  enlarged  in  defence  of  Turner, 
who  was  fast  becoming  the  butt  of  the  igno- 
rant critics.  But  his  great  work — the  book 
that  was  to  bring  him  such  immortahty 
as  he  may  enjoy — was  as  yet  unpublished. 
The  first  volume  of  "  Modern  Painters,"  or, 
as  he  was  within  an  ace  of  calling  it,  "Turner 
and  the  Ancients,"  was,  indeed,  not  unwritten; 
but  it  was  not  issued  until  the  following  year. 
And  when  the  portrait  was  hung  in  the  Royal 
Academy  and  catalogued  "  1061,  John  Raskin, 
Esq.,"  there  was  none  so  wise  as  to  correct  it. 

For  that  portrait,  which  is  reproduced 
through  the  kindness  of  Mr.  Arthur  Severn 
and  of  the  artist,  Mr.  Richmond  had  plenty  of 
opportunity  for  studying  his  sitter.  His  senior 
by  ten  years,  Mr.  Richmond  was  of  the  Ruskin 
family  party  which,  with  Mr.  Joseph  (otherwise 
"  Keats's  ")  Severn,  journeyed  through  France 
and  Italy  for  the  purpose  of  studying  nature 
and  aesthetics  in  the  artistic  Elysium  of  Europe. 
He  shared  his  enthusiasm  for  art  and  encour- 
aged his  aspirations ;  and  he  was  his  com- 
panion on  other  expeditions,  for  which  reason 
this  first  portrait  of  Ruskin  as  a  man — he  was 
now  in  his  twenty- fourth  year — has  a  peculiar 
interest.     It  is  manifestly  like  him  ;  and  his  at- 


176  JOHN  RUSK  IN. 

titude  as  he  turns  from  his  desk,  at  which,  may 
be,  he  had  just  been  polishing  his  rounded 
periods  in  the  proof-sheets  of  "Modern 
Painters,"  and  was  about  to  make  some  new 
drawing  of  the  distant  Alps,  is  thoroughly 
characteristic  of  the  man.  The  mountain  land- 
scape background,  too,  of  which  Mont  Blanc  is 
the  principal  feature,  is  what  we  might  expect 
from  the  boy  who  asked  for  "  boo  hills."  But 
the  spectator  cannot  but  be  struck  with  sur- 
prise at  his  quite  unusual  tallness.  This  is  a 
physical  fact  which  we  can  hardly  accept,  tall 
though  Ruskin  undoubtedly  was  in  his  youth  ; 
yet  it  may  be  that  the  natural  slightness  of  the 
young  author  and  a  certain  smallness  of  the 
furniture  lent  him  a  heio-ht  which  is  misleading 
only  through  lack  of  proper  comparison  of  pro- 
portion. As  a  work  of  art  the  portrait  is  in 
every  way  charming  and  interesting,  and  an  ad- 
mirable example  of  the  water-colour  portraits 
with  which  Mr.  Richmond — "  dear  Georee  Rich- 
mond,"  as  Ruskin  calls  him — was  then  buildincr 
up  his  reputation. 

It  shows  us  the  Ruskin  militant  of  those  days 
— not  yet  steeped  in  the  bitterness  of  contro- 
versy, but  ready  for  the  fray — good-humoured, 
sensitive,  shrewd,  and  keen,  turning  his  gentle 
and  kindly  face  towards  the  friend  who  is  paint- 
ing him.     To  judge  by  the  shape  of  his  head 


THE  PORTRAITS  OF  RUSK  IN.  177 

and  face,  he  already  belongs  to  what  phrenolo- 
gists  and  physiognomists  would  call  the  "  eagle 
tribe  " — the  aquiline  nose,  as  they  would  tell  us, 
denoting  sovereignty  over  men  ;  the  projecting 
brows,  perceptiveness  with  undoubted  aesthetic 
tendencies  ;  and  the  chin,  a  considerable  degree 
of  reasoning  power  to  direct  his  strongly-con- 
ceived opinions,  yet  with  hardly  a  correspond- 
ing capacity  for  continuous  logical  deduction. 
Thus  has  his  face  been  read  by  an  accredited 
student  of  physiognomy.  Yet  with  this  version 
would  the  subject  of  it  certamly  have  disagreed ; 
for  Ruskin  especially  prided  himself  upon  his 
power  of  logical  deduction  and  analysis,  and 
somewhere  quotes  Mazzini  on  him  to  the  same 
effect. 

On  these  characteristics  of  face  Sir  John 
Everett  Millais  dwelt  somewhat  over-much  in 
a  chalk  or  pencil-drawing  executed  about  this 
time,  if  we  are  to  judge  by  the  impression  it 
made  on  those  who  saw  it.  Referrino-  to  this 
drawing,  the  late  Mr.  Woolner,  R.A.,  wrote  to 
me  as  follows  : — "  The  Millais  pencil-sketch  was 
in  the  possession  of  Lady  Trevelyan,  wife  of 
the  late  Sir  Walter  Trevelyan,  of  Wallington. 
The  likeness,  so  far  as  I  can  remember,  was 
very  good,  but  the  expression  that  of  a  hyena, 
or  something  between  Carker  and  that  hilarious 
animal.     Enemies   would    call    the   expression 


178  JOHN  RUSK  IN. 

characteristic,  but  friends  would  declare  that  it 
did  him  injustice."  Whether  this  portrait  is 
the  same  as  that  by  Sir  John,  now  belonging  to 
Mr.  Severn,  I  cannot  say. 

In  1853  Sir  John  Millais  began  his  brilliant 
portrait  of  the  now  celebrated  art-critic.  Ruskin 
was  known  as  the  author  of  "  Modern  Painters," 
he  had  published  his  "  Seven  Lamps  of  Archi- 
tecture," the  "Stones  of  Venice,"  and  other 
things,  and  had  assumed  the  position  of  the 
champion  of  the  cause  of  the  Pre-Raphaelite 
Brotherhood — a  champion  plus  royaliste  que  le 
7oi,  more  Pre-Raphaelite  than  the  Pre-Raphael- 
ites,  and  with  more  impetuous  enthusiasm  in  his 
own  nervous  brain  and  frame  than  in  those 
of  the  whole  other  seven  put  together.  This 
movement  had  for  the  last  five  years  profoundly 
exercised  the  minds  of  the  art-world,  and  no 
pen  but  Ruskin's  could  have  fought  its  battle 
so  fiercely,  so  powerfully,  and  so  eloquently, 
nor  with  so  great  a  measure  of  success.  In 
acknowledgment  of  the  yeoman's  service  he 
had  rendered  and  was  still  rendering,  Millais 
painted  this  portrait,  which  its  possessor.  Sir 
Henry  Acland,  of  Oxford,  has  so  courteously 
allowed  me  to  reproduce.  Both  painter  and 
sitter  were  in  Scotland,  whither  the  young 
author  had  gone  to  deliver  his  "Lectures  on 
Architecture  and  Painting,"  and  there,  standing 


THE  PORTRAITS  OF  RUSK  IN.  179 

by  the  waterfall  of  Glenfinlas,  Millais  painted 
him,  religiously  abiding  in  the  execution  of  the 
picture  by  all  the  tenets  of  the  Pre-Raphaelite 
faith,  Ruskin  says  somewhere  that  the  English- 
man is  content  to  have  his  portrait  painted  any 
way  but  praying,  which  was  the  chosen  delight 
of  the  Venetian  noble ;  and  similarly  here, 
though  not  on  his  knees,  but  wrapped  in  loving- 
reverence  of  nature,  full  of  tliat  spirit  of  hu- 
mility and  reverential  awe  which  all  men  feel 
at  times,  is  the  young  preacher  represented,  as 
he  stands  bare-headed  by  the  little  cataract 
that  rushes  and  dances  down  the  "grey-white 
valley"  to  join  the  waters  of  Loch  Lomond. 
With  rare  conscientiousness  has  Millais  ren- 
dered every  detail  in  the  scene.  The  geologist 
can  detect  no  flaw  in  the  painting  of  the  rocks, 
nor  can  the  botanist  find  aught  to  carp  at  in 
the  representation  of  lichen,  plant,  or  flower, 
Detail  was  never  more  truthfully  and  accurately 
set  on  canvas  than  here  in  this  small  frame, 
measuring  in  all  but  eight-and-twenty  inches 
by  twenty-four,  while  in  respect  to  technique 
the  painter  has  rarely  excelled  the  perfect 
execution  of  this  work,  which  he  completed 
in  1854,  the  year  after  his  election  into  the 
Academy. 

Nor    is    the    character   of  the  figfure   at  all 
unworthy  of  the   still-life   in    this    remarkable 


i8o  JOHN  RUSK  IN. 

picture.  The  man  is  seen  at  a  moment  when 
his  enthusiasm  is  lost  in  contemplation.  The 
hair,  always  luxuriant,  even  to  the  last,  is 
thrown  back  in  somewhat  heavy  masses  from 
his  temples,  and  reveals  once  more,  and,  per- 
haps, more  successfully  than  heretofore,  the 
stamp  of  man  he  was.  Drawn  between  profile 
and  three-quarter  face,  the  upper  part  of  the 
head  is  perfectly  rendered ;  but  the  aquilinity 
of  the  nose  is  not  sufficiently  emphasized,  nor 
is  the  full  sensibility  of  the  mouth  made  quite 
as  much  of  as  it  deserves — and  his  mouth 
was  one  of  his  most  remarkable  features.  In 
this  connection  a  further  extract  from  Mr. 
Woolner's  private  reminiscences  of  Ruskin's 
appearance  may  be  appropriately  quoted  : — 

"As  to  Ruskin's  mouth,  it  would  be  hard 
for  anyone  to  read  that  feature.  Rossetti  told 
me  that  when  a  boy  Ruskin  had  part  of  one  of 
his  lips  bitten  off  by  a  dog.  The  mouth  is  the 
most  expressive  of  all  features,  and  tells  the 
history  of  its  owner's  nature  better  than  any 
other  ;  but  under  the  circumstances  how  would 
it  be  possible  to  read  it  accurately  ?  To  fill  up 
the  gaps  in  Sappho's  verse  would  be  but  a 
schoolboy's  exercise  compared  to  such  a  task. 
Lavater  might  give  a  hint,  or  the  Greek  expert 
who  discovered  that  Socrates  was  a  sensual 
fellow,  but  I  don't  think  any  modern  physiog- 


THE  PORTRAITS  OF  RUSKIN.  l8l 

nomist  could  do  much  with  this  modern  in- 
stance. Of  course,  the  main  force  of  his  head 
is  perception,  this  faculty  being  unusually  de- 
veloped ;  but,  so  far  as  I  remember,  I  do  not 
think  there  is  anything  else  out  of  the  common 
in  the  shape  of  it.  His  expression  is  varied 
beyond  all  example  in  my  experience." 

Sanguineness  and  sweetness  of  tempera- 
ment, when  not  crossed,  appear  to  have  been 
his  chief  characteristics  at  that  time.  Writing 
to  me  about  our  friend,  as  he  knew  him  in 
those  early  days,  Mr.  Holman  Hunt  has  re- 
corded his  interesting  recollections  as  follows  : — 

"  When  I  first  met  him  I  was  struck  by  his 
great  slenderness  of  build,  which  was  not  yet 
without  remarkable  gracefulness  of  motion  in 
quiet  life.  In  manner,  his  persevering  polite- 
ness and  untiring  pains  to  interest  me  and 
others  in  his  possessions  almost  surprised  me, 
and  it  would  have  been  really  unbearable  to 
receive  so  much  attention  had  he  not  shown 
so  much  pleasure  in  gratifying  his  guests.  On 
further  acquaintance  he  was  quite  capable  of 
expressing  the  most  extreme  discontent  that 
his  friends  would  not  adopt  all  his  views.  He 
was  displeased  with  me  for  my  determination 
to  go  to  the  East,  and  that  I  did  not  set 
myself  to  work  to  found  a  school.  I  was 
often    amused    at   his    ignoring    the   state   of 

i6 


l82  JOHN  RUSK  IN, 

paralysis  I  was  generally  in  from  want  of 
means.  He  would  ask  me  why  I  did  not  go 
to  Scotland  for  a  few  weeks  or  months  for  a 
holiday  when  I  appeared  overworked?  and 
more  than  once  he  urged  me  not  to  delay 
leaving  England  for  the  purpose  of  seeing 
Italy — when  in  truth  my  purse  would  have 
been  empty  at  Dover,  and  there  would  have 
been  no  means  of  makinof  sure  of  a  home 
had  I  returned  on  foot  from  the  coast.  It 
was  quite  strange  to  witness  how  this  life- 
long experience  of  finding  all  things  that  he 
wanted  at  hand  had  made  him,  not  incapable 
of  talking  of  poverty,  but  without  power  of 
realising  how  straitness  of  means  prevented 
a  man  from  obeying  the  inclinations  of  his 
mind  and  body  at  every  turn.  Whatever 
feeling  he  professed  towards  one's  purposes, 
I  can  say  that  I  never  found  him  anything 
but  most  gentle  and  tenderly  affectionate,  and 
although  for  some  years  circumstances  made 
us  unable  to  see  one  another  much,  I  never 
had  any  reason  to  think  him  other  than  one 
of  the  truest  men  I  had  ever  met  as  a  noble 
friend."  It  is  not  uninteresting  to  seek  for 
the  traits  set  forth  in  Mr.  Holman  Hunt's 
generous  testimony  in  the  admirable  synchro- 
nous portrait  by  Millais. 

Three  years   later,  in    1857,   Mr.  Richmond 


JOHN   RUSKIN,  1884. 

FROM   THE    BUST    BY    CONRAD    DRESSLER. 


iSee  p.  IQS-) 


THE  PORTRAITS   OF  RUSK  IN.  185 

executed  a  head  in  chalk,  also  for  Mr.  Ruskin 
the  elder,  which  is  an  excellent  specimen  of 
the  artist's  skill  in  this  kind  of  portraiture.  In 
this  drawing,  as  in  the  water-colour,  Mr.  Rich- 
mond has  preferred  to  show  us  the  gentleness, 
thoughtfulness,  and  brilliance  of  the  friend, 
rather  than  the  vigour,  the  combativeness,  and 
the  earnestness  of  the  crusader — characteristics 
which  at  the  time  were  most  impressed  on 
the  public  mind.  In  both  his  charming  works 
it  is  "  Ruskin  at  Home  "  whom  the  artist  has 
recorded,  not  Ruskin  the  Teacher  nor  Ruskin 
the  Missionary.  This  portrait,  which  hangs 
at  Brantwood,  and  which  was  brilliantly 
engraved  by  Francis  Holl,  A.R.A. — Frank 
Holl's  father — and  issued  in  a  reduced  size  in 
one  of  Mr.  Allen's  publications,  was  exhibited 
at  the  Royal  Academy  in  the  year  it  was  made. 
Mrs,  Severn  tells  me  the  following  pretty  cir- 
cumstance concerning  this  head: — "When  the 
1857  portrait  was  done  by  dear,  courteous  Mr. 
Richmond,  some  friends  thought  it  flattered 
Mr.  Ruskin  ;  but  Mr.  Richmond  said,  '  No  ;  it 
is  only  the  truth,  lovingly  told.' " 

A  few  years  after  Mr.  George  Richmond 
painted  his  large  water-colour  head  of  Professor 
Ruskin,  Rossetti  produced  his  portrait  of  his 
friend.     It  is  a  crayon  drawing,  not  unlike  those 

which  he  executed  of  other  members  of  the  Pre- 

16* 


1 86  JOHN  RUSK  IN. 

Raphaelite  Brotherhood.  It  is  simply  executed 
in  coloured  chalks,  of  which  the  prevailing  tint 
is  red,  and  represents  the  young  enthusiast  in 
an  attitude  in  which  the  artist  often  placed  his 
sitters — nearly  full-face  and  looking  down.  It 
is  life-size,  vignette  in  form,  and  belonged  to  the 
late  Dr.  Pocock,  of  Brighton ;  it  is  now  at  Oxford. 

Nearly  another  decade  elapsed  before  any 
portrait  other  than  photographic  was  produced 
that  I  know  of.  Mr.  Ruskin's  water-colour 
portrait  of  himself,  which  is  at  Heme  Hill,  was 
painted  in  1864,  or  perhaps  a  year  later — a 
three-quarter  view  in  pencil,  lightly  and  skil- 
fully washed  in ;  this  and  another  life-size  head 
belong  to  Mrs.  Arthur  Severn.  Ten  years 
afterwards  the  Professor  made  two  more  auto- 
graphic efforts,  one  in  pencil  and  the  other  in 
water-colour — both  of  which  he  presented  to 
his  American  friend  and  fellow-traveller,  Pro- 
fessor C.  A.  Norton.  In  1875,  or  thereabouts, 
a  clever  modeller,  by  name  Mr.  Charles  Ash- 
more,  of  Aston,  a  suburb  of  Birmingham,  pro- 
duced a  plaster  medallion  that  is  an  excellent 
likeness  of  Ruskin's  features ;  but  it  fails  to 
impart  any  vivacity  to  the  face  or  to  give  any 
of  the  expression  of  intellectuality  which  was 
never  absent  from  it.  This  work,  however, 
probably  took  a  photograph  for  its  basis. 

The    following    year — that   which    saw    his 


THE  PORTRAITS  OF  RUSK  IN.  187 

re-election  to  the  Slade  Professorship  in  the 
University  of  Oxford — his  features  were  cleverly 
caught  by  M.  Georges  Pilotelle,  who  chanced 
upon  the  Professor  as  he  stood  before  Turner's 
"  Python  "  in  the  National  Gallery.  The  "light- 
ning artist"  made  a  faithful  sketch  of  the 
thoughtful  face,  and,  re-drawing  it  in  dry-point 
upon  copper,  he  introduced  it  into  the  series  of 
portraits  of  notabilities  which  he  was  then  pro- 
ducing for  Mr.  Noseda,  by  whose  permission  it 
appears  on  page  1 1 1  of  the  present  volume. 
It  is  not  uninteresting  to  compare  this  head  with 
that  in  the  Millais  picture  painted  two-and- 
twenty  years  before,  and  to  see  how  little  time 
has  worked  upon  the  living  face,  and  how 
lightly  it  has  dealt  with  the  flowing  locks.  Here 
he  is  as  we  of  the  younger  generation  knew 
him,  his  favourite  sky-blue  stiff  satin  tie  wound 
round  his  neck  and  fallinof  In  a  bow  in  the 
familiar,  double-breasted  waistcoat,  and  match- 
ing the  deep  azure  of  his  clear  and  fearless 
eyes.  There  is  more  indecision  than  might  be 
expected  about  the  lips,  but  that,  I  take  it,  is 
rather  the  fault  of  the  etcher's  needle  than  of 
the  Professor's  mouth.  It  may  be  observed 
that  the  hair  is  parted  on  the  opposite  side — a 
merely  accidental  representation,  owing  to  the 
direct  sketch  upon  the  copper  being  reversed 
in  the  printing. 


1 88  JOHN  RUSK  IN. 

To  the  same  period,  or  nearly  so,  belong 
two  other  portraits:  the  first,  a  miniature  by 
Mr.  Andrews,  which  was  exhibited  at  the  Royal 
Academy  in  1877,  and  which,  being  based  upon 
a  previously-produced  likeness,  need  find  no 
place  here ;  and  the  second,  a  water-colour 
drawing  by  Mr.  Arthur  Severn.  This  interest- 
ing little  picture,  painted  in  full-length,  together 
with  the  chalk  drawing  by  Millais,  is  in  the 
hands  of  the  painter,  and  I  respect  his  wishes 
in  reserving  any  description  of  it. 

Towards  the  close  of  the  same  year — Sep- 
tember, 1877 — Mr.  Benjamin  Creswick  pro- 
duced his  bust  under  circumstances  of  some 
interest.  The  sculptor  was  one  of  the  many 
artists  whose  talent  Mr.  Ruskin  "  discovered " 
in  his  long  life  of  beneficent  watchfulness,  and 
whose  education  he  personally  undertook,  while 
charging  himself  with  the  cost  of  their  worldly 
necessities.  Mr.  Creswick,  in  later  years 
Lecturer  to  the  Birmingham  School  of  Art, 
sought  to  express  his  gratefulness  for  the 
generosity  and  interest  of  his  patron — who,  I 
understand,  paid  all  expenses,  not  only  for 
himself  during  four  years,  but  also  for  his 
family  (for  he  married  young)  and  his  aged 
parents — by  modelling  the  bust  in  his  tenderest 
mood,  into  which  he  aimed  at  throwing  all  the 
love  and  reverence  he  entertained  for  his  bene- 


THE  PORTRAITS  OF  RUSKIN.  189 

factor.  Mr.  Creswick's  introduction  to  Ruskin 
was  through  the  late  Mr.  Swan,  when  the  late 
curator  of  the  Ruskin  Museum  at  Sheffield 
was  on  a  visit  to  the  Professor  at  Brantwood. 
"Whilst  there,"  writes  Mr.  Creswick  in  refer- 
ence to  this  incident,  "  he  induced  him  to 
give  me  a  sitting  for  a  bust.  This  was  early 
in  September,  1877.  After  the  first  sitting 
of  an  hour  the  Professor  asked  me  how  many 
more  I  should  require.  '  Five,'  I  replied. 
'After  what  I  have  seen  of  your  work,'  said 
he,  'I  will  give  you  as  many  as  you  want'  " — 
for  Ruskin  took  a  quite  Pre-Raphaelite  delight 
in  watching  for  how  long  a  time,  and  with 
how  much  patience,  the  sculptor  would  work 
at  obtaining  an  expression  which  the  briefest 
glance  had  enabled  him  to  observe.  The  re- 
sult is  a  bust  which  has  pleased  those  most 
concerned,  Ruskin  declaring  it,  while  it  was 
still  in  progress,  as  unsurpassed  in  modern 
sculpture  except  by  Thorwaldsen ;  while  others 
regard  it  as  being  specially  successful  in  real- 
ising one  of  the  sitter's  most  beautiful  ex- 
pressions, and  entirely  characteristic  of  his 
animation  when  interested  by  sympathetic  con- 
versation. The  bust,  which  is  in  the  Ruskin 
Museum  at  Meersbrook  Park,  Sheffield,  repre 
sents  the  Professor  in  the  gown  of  his  degree. 
There    is   also   distinctly   indicated   the    slight 


igo  JOHN  RUSK  IN. 

stoop,  or  bend,  that  his  friends  knew  so  well, 
which  afterwards  became  so  much  accentuated. 
For  my  own  part,  judging  from  the  photo- 
graph which  Dr.  Bendelack  Hewetson  has 
kindly  taken  for  me,  I  cannot  help  thinking 
that,  pleasing  as  it  is  in  expression,  the  bust 
is  neither  striking  as  a  likeness  nor,  to  be 
frank,  in  point  of  vigour  likely  to  occupy  so 
high  a  position  as  a  work  of  art,  as  others  have 
freely  declared.  Yet,  as  I  said  before,  it  is  a 
favourite  work  with  some  who  are  considered 
good  judges  and  who  certainly  were  well  ac- 
quainted with  the  Professor.  A  duplicate  of  the 
bust  is  in  the  possession  of  Sir  Henry  Acland. 
The  late  Sir  J.  Edgar  Boehm,  R.A,,  modelled 
a  bust  of  Ruskin  for  the  Ruskin  School  in 
the  University  Galleries  in  1880,  and  there  it 
is  now  placed,  carried  out  in  marble  upon  a 
pedestal,  in  the  centre  of  the  large  room.  The 
portrait  can  hardly  be  considered  a  sympa- 
thetic one.  Not  that  the  sculptor  was  out  of 
sympathy  with  his  sitter — as  the  reader  may 
judge  by  the  words  of  the  artist,  who,  writing 
to  me  a  short  while  befoie  his  death  on  the 
subject  of  the  work,  said,  "I  never  saw  any 
face  on  which  the  character  and  the  inside  of 
the  man  were  so  clearly  written.  He  can 
never  have  tried  to  dissimulate."  How  true 
this   is  will   be  felt  by  all    Ruskin's  acquaint- 


THE  PORTRAITS  OF  R  US  KIN.  191 

ance.  Not  only  could  he  never  have  tried 
to  dissimulate,  but  that  man  must  have  been 
hardened  indeed  who  would  try  to  dissimulate 
in  his  magnetic  presence,  for  so  fearlessly 
truthful  was  his  look  that  the  quiet  gaze  from 
the  bright  blue  eyes  must  have  been  strangely 
disarming.  What  appears  unsatisfactory  about 
Sir  Edgar's  bust  is  a  certain  hardness  of  ex- 
pression about  the  mouth — an  absence  of  those 
qualities  which  rarely  failed  to  endear  him  at 
once  to  whomever  entered  into  conversation 
with  him.  It  is  the  scholar,  the  thinker,  and 
the  disputant,  rather  than  the  man,  that  Sir 
Edgar  shows  us. 

We  now  come  to  the  large  life-size  por 
trait  by  Professor  Hubert  Herkomer,  R.A. 
In  this  likeness,  it  seems  to  me,  the  artist 
has  sought  to  place  upon  the  face  of  his 
predecessor  in  the  Slade  Chair  all  the  kind- 
liness which  Sir  Edgar  Boehm  omitted,  all 
the  cheery  gentleness  and  old-world  sweet- 
ness of  disposition  that  distinguished  him. 
The  Boehm  bust  shows  us  something  of  a 
misanthrope ;  the  Herkomer  portrait  places 
before  us  the  philanthropist,  quiet,  kindly,  and 
self-possessed.  The  brow  is,  perhaps,  a  little 
too  broad,  and  the  projection  of  the  eyebrows 
hardly  enough  insisted  upon  ;  but  the  character 
of  the  nose  and  the  quaint,  expressive  mouth 


192  JOHN  RUSK  IN. 

are  perfectly  rendered.  This  admirable  por- 
trait is  nominally  a  water-colour ;  but  that 
medium,  strongly  aided  by  body-colour,  is 
reinforced  with  a  pulpy  substance,  and  resem- 
bles in  method  of  execution  the  artist's  well- 
known  picture  of  "  Grandfather's  Pet."  It  was 
exhibited  at  the  Grosvenor  Gallery  in  1881, 
and  was  etched  by  the  painter  in  the  same 
year,  the  plate  being  published  for  him  by  the 
Fine  Art  Society. 

The  year  1884  saw  a  new  portrait  of  "the 
Master."  Being  in  London  he  visited  Miss 
Kate  Greenaway,  and  there  sat  to  her  for  the 
commencement  of  a  likeness  which  was  never 
completed.  It  was  there,  doubtless,  that  his 
great  admiration  for  her  art  sprang  up,  with 
the  result  with  which  we  are  all  familiar — the 
Oxford  lecture  on  "The  Art  of  Encrland,"  the 
illustrations  in  "  Fors,"  and  many  a  kindly 
reference  of  enthusiastic  approval  alike  for  the 
artist's  dainty  simplicity  of  style,  and  for  her 
original  beauty  of  draughtsmanship.  But  the 
portrait  with  which  the  year  is  to  be  credited 
was  the  pencil-drawing  by  Mr.  Blake  Wirg- 
man,  subsequently  published  in  the  Graphic  in 
April,  1886.  In  consenting  to  sit,  the  Professor 
wrote  to  the  lady  who  pleaded  for  Mr.  Wirg- 
man  :  "  I'll  have  this  portrait  different  from  any 
that  have  been  yet — only  I  always  fall  asleep 


THE  PORTRAITS  OF  RUSKIN.  193 

in  a  quarter  of  an  hour,  so  everything  in  the 
way  of  expression  must  be  got,  tell  the  artist, 
in  ten  minutes."  Soon  after  this  alarming 
notification  the  first  sitting  took  place  at  Den- 
mark Hill,  Ruskin  pointing  out  the  particular 
view  the  artist  was  to  take ;  and  the  second  in 
Mr.  Burne-Jones'  studio.  When  the  drawing 
was  finished,  and  the  background  worked  up 
from  the  study  at  Denmark  Hill,  Ruskin  put 
a  few  finishing-  touches  to  it  himself — touches 
having  chiefly  reference  to  the  hair  and  eye- 
brows, about  which  he  was  very  particular — 
and  the  work  went  off  to  the  engraver,  and  has 
now  found  a  resting-place  in  my  own  collection. 
Passing  over  as  unauthentic  and  unofificial 
the  portraits  by  Mr.  Emptmeyer  and  Miss 
Webling,  both  exhibited  at  the  Academy  in 
1888,  I  arrive  at  the  bust  of  Mr.  Conrad 
Dressier,  executed  by  him  in  1884,  and  ex- 
hibited at  the  New  Gallery  in  1889.  This  head, 
apart  from  its  inherent  merits  as  a  work  of  art, 
is  of  special  interest  and  value,  as  being  the 
only  one  (so  far  as  I  know)  which  represents 
Mr.  Ruskin  with  a  beard,  as  he  was  known  to 
his  friends  since  1881.  As  a  likeness,  I  must 
admit  that  the  engraving  hardly  does  justice  to 
Mr.  Dressler's  work — the  characteristic  stoop, 
erect  though  bent,  and  the  falling  cheeks,  the 
slightly  hooked  nose,  the  open,  sensitive  nos- 


194  JOHN  RUSK  IN. 

trils,  the  pendant  base  of  the  septum,  and  the 
bony  brows,  do  not  appear  as  clearly  in  the  en- 
graving as  they  should — the  fault  manifestly 
lying  with  the  lighting  of  it  in  the  photograph 
from  which  the  block  was  cut.  Speaking  to  me 
of  this  same  bust,  which  he  said  was  "better 
than  Boehm's,"  Mr.  Ruskin  once  said — with  a 
strong  touch  of  pathos,  yet  with  a  look  of  irre- 
sistible humour,  "  Ah  !  it  makes  me  look  far 
more  frantic  than  ever  I've  been !"  In  point 
of  fact,  Ruskin  was,  as  I  began  by  saying,  very 
tender  as  regards  his  personal  appearance  ;  and 
I  well  remember  his  unfeigned  pleasure  when  I 
told  him  upon  one  occasion  that  he  certainly 
did  not  look  his  years.  Readers  of  "  Prae- 
terita  "  will  remember  the  delightful  story  of 
"Little  Rosie,"  when  in  1858  Mr.  Ruskin  paid 
a  visit  to  her  mother : — "  Rosie  says  never  a 
word,  but  we  continue  to  take  stock  of  each 
other.  'I  thought  you  so  ugly,'  she  told  me 
afterwards.  She  didn't  quite  mean  that,"  the 
writer  hastens  to  add ;  "  but  only,  her  mother 
having  talked  so  much  of  my  'greatness'  to 
her,  she  had  expected  me  to  be  something  like 
Garibaldi,  or  the  Elgin  Theseus,  and  was  ex- 
tremely disappointed."  And  again  he  confided, 
with  mock  despondency,  to  the  Lady  of  Thwaite 
how  he  had  recently  had  his  photograph  taken  ; 
that,  although  the  likeness  was  good,  he  had 


JOHN   RUSKIN,  iS86. 

FROM    A    I'llOTOGRAPli    UV    BARRAUD. 


{See  p.  ibq.) 


THE  PORTRAITS   OF  RUSK  IN.  197 

come  out,  as  usual,  as  an  ourang-outang,  "  I 
thought  with  my  beard  I  was  beginning  to  be 
just  the  least  bit  nice  to  look  at.  I  would  give 
up  half  my  books  for  a  new  profile." 

Some  years  ago  we  were  talking  about  his 
portraits,  when  he  took  occasion  to  tell  me,  in 
a  sweeping  sort  of  way,  that  he  was  dissatisfied 
with  all  that  had  been  done  of  him,  and  the 
truer  and  the  more  candid  they  were  the  less  he 
cared  for  them,  "  I  like  to  be  flattered,  both 
by  pen  and  pencil,  so  it  is  done  prettily  and  in 
good  taste,"  he  said,  with  a  candid  smile,  not  at 
all  ashamed  of  the  little  confession.  It  is,  how- 
ever, in  no  sense  discreditable  to  Mr.  Dress- 
ier if  he  has  not  given  just  that  touch  of  flattery 
— even  concedinof  a  lack  of  truth — of  which  the 
Professor  admitted  his  fondness. 

"  I  cannot  tell  how  many  sittings  we  had," 
wrote  the  sculptor,  in  a  letter  in  which  he  de- 
scribed with  glowing  enthusiasm  the  fascination 
of  his  visit  to  the  Professor  in  the  spring  of 
1884.  "They  took  place  in  the  out-house,  a 
very  convenient  place  for  my  purpose  ;  and  I 
had  as  many  as  I  wanted,  some  long  and  some 
short,  as  the  humour  served.  I  had,  with  the 
help  of  the  old  valet,  made  a  little  platform  for 
the  Professor  to  sit  upon,  and  from  this  position 
he  would  watch  me  at  my  work  for  a  couple  of 

hours,  sometimes  talking  the  whole  of  the  time. 

17* 


198  JOHN  RUSK  IN. 

.  .  ,  My  deepest  recollection  of  Professor  Rus- 
kin  is  as  he  stood  one  evening  after  dinner 
(during  which  the  conversation  had  been  about 
his  life  and  work,  and  had  been  more  animated 
and  touching  than  usual)  at  the  open  window 
overhanging  the  lake.  The  sun  had  gone  down, 
and  he  wistfully  looked  over  towards  the  Old 
Man  of  Coniston,  behind  which  the  sky  was  still 
aglow.  He  seemed  to  be  mentally  reviewing 
his  life's  work.  His  head  was  held  up,  although 
his  body  was  slightly  stooping,  his  right  hand 
behind  his  back,  and  his  left  held  on  to  the  case- 
ment for  support.  I  was  deeply  impressed  with 
the  expression  of  mystery  in  his  face,  and  deter- 
mined to  endeavour  to  reproduce  it  in  my  bust. 
I  have  failed  in  my  ideal ;  but  that  is  what  I  tried." 
With  that  picture  I  close  this  chapter.  The 
sun  has  indeed  gone  down  behind  the  Grand 
Old  Man  of  Coniston ;  while  the  sky  is  still  all 
aglow  with  the  fire  of  his  words  and  the  gold 
of  his  beneficent  acts.  His  portrait,  his  true 
portrait,  does  not  exist — it  could  not  exist — not 
until  the  artist's  hand  can  picture  in  paint  or 
mould  in  clay  the  ever-varying,  never-ending 
expression  and  the  thousand  moods,  change- 
able but  always  honest,  uncertain  in  temper  but 
always  good  and  kind  and  tender  and  righteous, 
that  go  to  make  up  the  face  so  lovingly  remem- 
bered by  his  friends  as  that  of  John  Ruskin. 


CHAPTER   XV. 

"THE  BLACK  ARTS:    A  REVERIE   IN  THE 

STRAND." 

BY  JOHN  RUSKIN. 

[Note. — In  the  autumn  of  1887  Ruskin  was 
in  London,  staying,  as  usual,  at  Morley's  Hotel, 
Trafalgar  Square,  whence  a  two  minutes'  walk 
would  carry  him  into  the  National  Gallery. 
His  window  overlooked  the  gallery  "where  the 
Turners  are,"  he  said  markedly  ;  but  not  caring 
for  the  light,  he  sat  with  his  back  towards  it, 
drawing  himself  up  into  one  side  of  it,  with  his 
knees  and  feet  together  in  his  characteristic  atti- 
tude. The  Editorship  of  the  Magazine  of  Art  had 
just  been  confided  to  me,  and  my  announce- 
ment of  it  seemed  to  awaken  his  sympathetic 
enthusiasm.  He  clapped  his  hands  and  cried, 
*'  Bravo !  I'm  so  glad.  You  have  a  great 
opportunity  now  for  good,"  and  immediately 
proposed  to  contribute  an  article  to  its  pages. 
It  was  agreed  that  the  paper  in  question  should 
appear  in  the  January  number,  and  that  it 
should  be  followed  by  at  least  one  other. 
Then  he  went  off  to  Sandgate  to  recuperate, 

whence  he  wrote  :  "  I  find  the  landlord  and  his 

199 


200  JOHN  RUSK  IN. 

wife  so  nice  and  the  rooms  so  comfortable  that 
I've  settled  down  (so  far  as  I  know)  till  Christ- 
mas. But  please  don't  tell  anybody  where  I 
am."  And  a  few  days  later  :  "  When  do  you 
want  your  bit  of  'pleasant'  writing?  Did  I 
say  it  would  be  pleasant  ?  I  have  no  confi- 
dence in  that  prospect.  What  I  meant  was 
that  it  wouldn't  be  deliberately  2/;2pleasant ; 
and  I  will  further  promise  it  shall  not  be  tech- 
nical. But  I  fear  it  will  be  done  mostly  in  gri- 
saillet.  I  don't  feel  up  to  putting  any  sparkle 
in — nor  colour  neither."  "For  one  thing,"  he 
wrote  on  another  occasion — for  he  had  now 
grown  quite  enthusiastic  over  the  magazine, 
and  was  offering  a  good  deal  of  very  accepta- 
ble advice,  "  I  shall  strongly  urge  the  publica- 
tion of  continuous  series  of  things,  good  or 
bad.  Half  the  dulness  of  all  art  books  is  their 
being  really  like  specimen  advertisement  books, 
instead  of  complete  accounts  of  anything." 
Then  followed  the  announcement:  'T  have  fin- 
ished the  introductory  paper ;  six  leaves  like 
this,  written  as  close.  It  will,  perhaps,  be 
shorter  than  you  wished  in  print,  but  you  will 
see  it  chats  about  a  good  many  things,  and  I 
couldn't  tack  on  the  principal  one  to  the  tail  of 
them  ;  so  that  you  had  better  begin  your  Janu- 
ary number  with  Watts'  more  serious  paper. 
Then  came  the  article,  but  with  no  title  to  it ; 


^^        ^5 


■i     ^^- 


.Ct0i/\yi'\^ 


7:^.>_  ^--^  ^^"^ ' 


"  THE  BLACK  ARTS."  203 

and  as  the  press  was  waiting  a  telegram  was 
despatched  to  him  to  supply  the  omission.  The 
characteristic  reply  came :  "  I  never  compose 
by  telegram,  but  call  it  *  The  Black  Arts,'  if  you 
like."  A  subsequent  letter  of  confirmation 
supplied  as  a  substitute  "  A  Reverie  in  the 
Strand " ;  and,  while  protesting  against  the 
telegram,  which  "  always  makes  me  think  some- 
body's dead,"  he  replied  to  a  question  of  mine 
as  to  the  amount  owing  to  him  for  the  article : 
"  You  are  indebted  to  me  a  penny  a  line ;  no 
more  and  no  less.  Of  course,  counted  two- 
pence through  the  double  columns."  Subse- 
quent letters,  as  well  as  previous  ones,  contain 
further  counsel  and  criticisms  in  respect  to  the 
Magazine  of  Art,  and  details  of  arrangement 
concerning  the  articles  which  were   to   follow 

o 

the  first — chiefly  bearing  on  "body-colour 
Turners,"  as  a  contrast  to  the  introductory 
matter,  and  on  "pure  composition,  as  far  as  I 
can  without  being  tiresome  ;  and  there  will  be 
something  about  skies  and  trees,  and  I'll  under- 
take that  the  drawings  I  send  shall  be  repre- 
sentable,  and  not  cost  much  in  representing." 
But  a  period  of  indisposition  followed,  in  which 
to  his  correspondence  was  appended  the  vale- 
dictory, "  And  I'm  ever  your  cross  old  J.  R. ; " 
and  a  subsequent  journey  and  return  to  Brant- 
wood,  with  another  spell  of  illness,  made  him 


204  JOHN  RUSK  IN. 

seek  for  a  spell  of  complete  rest,  upon  which 
it  would  have  been  cruel  to  break  in.  And  so 
his  intended  series  of  papers  remained  incom- 
plete, and  "The  Black  Arts"  remains  as  much 
a  fragment  of  an  intended  whole  as  "  Proser- 
pina," "Love's  Meinie,"  "Deucalion,"  "The 
Laws  ot  Fesole,"  "Our  Fathers  Have  Told 
Us,"  and  even  "Prseterita"  itself] 


It  must  be  three  or  four  years  now*  since 
I  was  in  London,  Christmas  in  the  North  coun- 
try passing  scarcely  noted,  with  a  white  frost 
and  a  little  bell-ringing,  and  I  don't  know  Lon- 
don any  more,  nor  where  I  am  in  it — except 
the  Strand.  In  which,  walking  up  and  down 
the  other  day,  and  meditating  over  its  wonder- 
ful displays  of  etchings  and  engravings  and 
photographs,  all  done  to  perfection  such  as  I 
had  never  thought  possible  in  my  younger  days, 
it  became  an  extremely  searching  and  trouble- 
some question  with  me  what  was  to  come  of  all 
this  literally  "black  art,"  and  how  it  was  to  in- 
fluence the  people  of  our  great  cities.  For  the 
first  force  of  it — clearly  in  that  field  everyone 
is  doing  his  sable  best:  there  is  no  scamped 
photography  nor  careless  etching ;  and  for 
second  force,  there  is  a  quantity  of  living  char- 

*  October,  1887. 


■'/ 


H  /(^^ 


Lu—ex^A.^ 


"  THE  BLACK  ARTS."  207 

acter  in  our  big  towns,  especially  in  their  girls, 
who  have  an  energetic  and  business-like  "  know- 
all-about-it "  kind  of  prettiness  which  is  widely 
independent  of  colour,  and  which,  with  the 
parallel  business  characters,  engineering  and 
financial,  of  the  city  squiredom,  can  be  vividly 
set  forth  by  the  photograph  and  the  schools  of 
painting  developed  out  of  it ;  then  for  the  third 
force,  there  is  the  tourist  curiosity  and  the  sci- 
entific naturalism,  which  go  round  the  world 
fetching  big  scenery  home  for  us  that  we  never 
had  dreamed  of:  cliffs  that  look  like  the  world 
split  in  two,  and  cataracts  that  look  as  if  they 
fell  from  the  moon,  besides  all  kinds  of  anti- 
quarian and  architectural  facts,  which  twenty 
lives  could  never  have  learned  in  the  olden 
time.  What  is  it  all  to  come  to?  Are  our 
lives  in  this  kingdom  of  darkness  to  be  indeed 
twenty  times  as  wise  and  long  as  they  were  in 
the  light  ? 

The  answer — what  answer  was  possible  to 
me — came  chiefly  in  the  form  of  fatigue,  and  a 
sorrowful  longing  for  an  old  Prout  washed  in 
with  Vandyke  brown  and  British  ink,  or  even  a 
Harding  forest  scene  with  all  the  foliage  done 
in  zigzag. 

And,  indeed,  for  one  thing,  all  this  labour 
and  realistic  finishing  makes  us  lose  sight  of 
the  charm  of  easily-suggestive   lines — nay,  of 


2o8  JOHN  RUSK  IN. 

the  power  of  lines,  properly  so  called,  alto- 
gether. 

There  is  a  little  book,  and  a  very  precious 
and  pretty  one,  of  Dr.  John  Brown's,  called 
"Something  about  a  Well."  It  has  a  yellow 
paper  cover,  and  on  the  cover  a  careful  wood- 
cut from  one  of  the  Doctor's  own  pen-sketches  ; 
two  wire-haired  terriers  begging,  and  carrying 
an  old  hat  between  them. 

There  is  certainly  not  more  than  five  minutes' 
work,  if  that,  in  the  original  sketch ;  but  the 
quantity  of  dog-life  in  those  two  beasts — the 
hill-weather  that  they  have  roughed  through  to- 
gether, the  wild  fidelity  of  their  wistful  hearts, 
the  pitiful,  irresistible  mendicancy  of  their  eyes 
and  paws — fills  me  with  new  wonder  and  love 
every  time  the  little  book  falls  out  of  any  of  the 
cherished  heaps  in  my  study. 

No  one  has  pleaded  more  for  finish  than  I  in 
past  time,  or  oftener,  or  perhaps  so  strongly 
asserted  the  first  principle  of  Leonardo,  that  a 
good  picture  should  look  like  a  mirror  of  the 
thing  itself.  But  now  that  everybody  can  mir- 
ror the  thing  itself — at  least  the  black  and  white 
of  it — as  easily  as  he  takes  his  hat  off,  and  then 
engrave  the  photograph,  and  steel  the  copper, 
and  print  piles  and  piles  of  the  thing  by  steam, 
all  as  good  as  the  first  half-dozen  proofs  used 
to  be,  I  begin  to  wish  for  a  little  less  to  look  at, 


\1'^'^  '^jV 


h!m/^    'CPa.  ^^^^"^yi    '^"^  ^  '    H'-^-U.   czi-v^   y-i^' 


"THE  BLACK  ARTSr  211 

and  would,  for  my  own  part,  gladly  exchange 
my  tricks  of  stippling  and  tinting  for  the  good 
Doctor's  gift  of  drawing  two  wire-haired  ter- 
riers with  a  wink. 

And  truly,  putting  all  likings  for  old  fashions 
out  of  the  way,  it  remains  certain  that  in  a  given 
time  and  with  simple  means,  a  man  of  imagina- 
tive power  can  do  more,  and  express  more,  and 
excite  the  fancy  of  the  spectator  more,  by  frank 
outline  than  by  completed  work ;  and  that  as- 
suredly there  ought  to  be  in  all  our  national  art 
schools  an  outline  class  trained  to  express  them- 
selves vigorously  and  accurately  in  that  man- 
ner. Were  there  no  other  reason  for  such  les- 
soning, it  is  a  sufficient  one  that  there  are 
modes  of  genius  which  become  richly  produc- 
tive in  that  restricted  manner ;  and  yet  by  no 
training  could  be  raised  into  the  excellence  of 
painting.  Neither  Bewick  nor  Cruikshank  in 
England,  nor  Retsch,  nor  Ludwig  Richter,  in 
Germany,  could  ever  have  become  painters  ; 
their  countrymen  owe  more  to  their  unassuming 
instinct  of  invention  than  to  the  most  exalted 
efforts  of  their  historical  schools. 

But  it  must  be  noted,  in  passing,  that  the 
practice  of  outline  in  England,  and  I  suppose 
partly  in  continental  academies  also,  has  been 
both  disgraced  and  arrested  by  the  endeavour 
to  elevate  it  into  the   rendering  of  ideal   and 


213  JOHN  RUSKIN. 

heroic  form,  especially  to  the  delineation  of 
groups  of  statuary.  Neither  flesh  nor  sculp- 
tured marble  can  be  outlined ;  and  the  en- 
deavour to  illustrate  classical  art  and  historical 
essays  on  it,  by  outlines  of  sculpture  and  archi- 
tecture, has  done  the  double  harm  of  making 
outline  common  and  dull,  and  preventing  the 
public  from  learning  that  the  merit  of  sculp- 
ture is  in  its  surfaces,  not  its  outlines.  The 
essential  value  of  outline  is  in  its  power  of  sug- 
gesting quantity,  intricacy,  and  character,  in 
accessory  detail,  and  in  the  richly-ornamented 
treatment  which  can  be  carried  over  large 
spaces  which  in  a  finished  painting  must  be 
lost  in  shade. 

But  I  have  said  in  many  places  before  now, 
though  never  with  enough  insistence,  that 
schools  of  outline  ought  to  be  associated  with 
the  elementary  practice  of  those  entering  on 
the  study  of  colour.  Long  before  the  patience 
or  observation  of  children  are  capable  of  draw- 
ing in  light  and  shade,  they  can  appreciate  the 
gaiety,  and  are  refreshed  by  the  interest  of 
colour  ;  and  a  very  young  child  can  be  taught 
to  wash  it  flatly,  and  confine  it  duly  within  limits. 
A  little  lady  of  nine  years  old  coloured  my 
whole  volume  of  Guillim's  heraldry  for  me 
without  one  transgression  or  blot ;  and  there  is 
no  question  but  that  the  habit  of  even  and  ac- 


"THE  BLACK  ARTS."  213 

curately  limited  tinting  is  the  proper  foundation 
of  noble  water-colour  art. 

In  the  original  plan  of  "  Modern  Painters," 
under  the  head  of  "  Ideas  of  Relation,"  I  had 
planned  an  exact  inquiry  into  the  effects  of 
colour-masses  in  juxtaposition  ;  but  found  when 
I  entered  on  it  that  there  were  no  existing 
data  in  the  note-books  of  painters  from  which 
any  first  principles  could  be  deduced ;  and  that 
the  analysis  of  their  unexplained  work  was  far 
beyond  my  own  power,  the  rather  that  the 
persons  among  my  friends  who  had  most 
definitely  the  gift  of  colour-arrangement  were 
always  least  able  to  give  any  account  of  their 
own  skill. 

But,  in  its  connection  with  the  harmonies  of 
music,  the  subject  of  the  relations  of  pure 
colour  is  one  of  deep  scientific  and — I  am  sorry 
to  use  the  alarming  word,  but  there  is  no  other 
— metaphysical  interest ;  and  without  debate, 
the  proper  way  of  approaching  it  would  be  to 
give  any  young  person  of  evident  colour- faculty 
a  series  of  interesting  outline  subjects,  to  colour 
with  a  limited  number  of  determined  tints,  and 
to  watch  with  them  the  pleasantness,  or  dul- 
ness — a  discord  of  the  arrangements  which,  ac- 
cording to  the  nature  of  the  subjects,  might  be 
induced  in  the  colours. 

It  is  to  be   further  observed   that  although 


SI4  JOHN  RUSK  IN. 

the  skill  now  directed  to  the  art  of  chromo- 
lithotint  has  achieved  wonders  in  that  mecha- 
nism, the  perfection  of  illustrated  work  must 
always  be  in  woodcut  or  engraving  coloured  by 
hand.  No  stamped  tint  of  water-colour  can 
ever  perfectly  give  the  gradation  to  the  sharp 
edge  left  by  a  well-laid  touch  of  the  pencil. 
And  there  can  be  no  question  (it  has  so  long 
been  my  habit  to  assert  things — at  all  events 
very  questionable  in  the  terms  I  choose  for 
them — in  mere  love  of  provocation,  that  now  in 
my  subdued  state  of  age  and  infirmity  I  take 
refuge,  as  often  as  possible,  in  the  Unquestion- 
able) that  great  advantage  might  be  gained  in 
the  geography  classes  of  primary  schools  by 
a  system  of  bright  color  adapted  to  dissected 
maps.  In  the  aforesaid  condition  of  age  and 
infirmity  which  I  sometimes  find  it  very  difficult 
to  amuse,  I  have  been  greatly  helped  by  get- 
ting hold  of  a  dissected  map  or  two — four,  to 
be  accurate — Europe,  France,  England,  and 
Scotland,  and  find  it  extremely  instructive 
(though  I  am  by  way  of  knowing  as  much 
geography  as  most  people)  to  put  them  to- 
gether out  of  chance-thrown  heaps,  when  I  am 
good  for  nothing  else.  I  begin,  for  instance, 
in  consequence  of  this  exercise,  to  have  some 
notion  where  Wiltshire  is,  and  Montgomer}'- 
shire  ;    and  where  the  departments  of   Haute 


"THE  BLACK  ARTS."  215 

Loire  and  Haute  Garonne  are  in  France,  and 
whereabouts  St.  Petersburg  is,  in  Russia.  But 
the  chief  profit  and  pleasure  of  the  business  to 
me  is  in  colouring  the  bits  of  counties  for  my- 
self, to  my  own  fancy,  with  nice,  creamy  body- 
colour,  which  covers  up  all  the  names,  leaves 
nothing  but  the  shape  to  guess  the  county  by 
(or  colour  when  once  determined),  and  opens 
the  most  entertainingr  debates  of  which  will  be 
the  prettiest  grouping  of  colours  on  the  con- 
dition of  each  being  perfectly  isolated. 

By  this  means,  also,  some  unchangeable  facts 
about  each  district  may  at  once  be  taught,  far 
more  valuable  than  the  reticulation  of  roads 
and  rails  with  which  all  maps  are  now,  as  a 
matter  of  course,  encumbered,  and  with  which 
a  child  at  its  dissected  map  period  has  nothing 
to  do.  Thus,  generally  reserving  purple  for 
the  primitive  rock  districts,  scarlet  for  the  vol 
canic,  green  for  meadow-land,  and  yellow  for 
corn-fields,  one  can  still  get  in  the  warm  or  cold 
hues  of  each  colour  variety  enough  to  separate 
districts  politically — if  not  geologically  distinct ; 
one  can  keep  a  dismal  grey  for  the  coal  coun- 
tries, a  darker  green  for  woodland — the  forests 
of  Sherwood  and  Arden,  for  instance — and 
then  giving  rich  gold  to  the  ecclesiastical  and 
royal  domains,  and  painting  the  lakes  and  rivers 
with  ultra-marine,  the  map  becomes  a  gay  and 


2l6  JOHN  RUSKIN. 

pleasant  bit  of  kaleidoscopic  iridescence  with- 
out any  question  of  colour-harmonies.  But  for 
the  sake  of  these,  by  a  good  composer  in  varie- 
gation, the  geological  facts  might  be  ignored, 
and  fixing  first  on  lo7ig-confirmed  political  ones, 
as,  for  instance,  on  the  blanche-rose  colour  and 
damask-rose  for  York  and  Lancaster,  and  the 
gold  for  Wells,  Durham,  Winchester,  and  Can- 
terbury, the  other  colours  might  be  placed  as 
their  musical  relations  required,  and  lessons  of 
their  harmonic  nature  and  power,  such  as  could 
in  no  other  so  simple  method  be  enforced, 
made  at  once  convincing  and  delightful. 

I  need  not  say,  of  course,  that  in  manuscript 
illumination  and  in  painted  glass,  lessons  of 
that  kind  are  constant,  and  of  the  deepest 
interest ;  but  in  manuscript  the  intricacy  of 
design,  and  in  glass  the  inherent  quality  of  the 
material,  are  so  great  a  part  of  the  matter  that 
the  abstract  relations  of  colour  cannot  be  ob- 
served in  their  simplicity.  I  intended  in  the 
conclusion  of  this  letter  to  proceed  into  some 
inquiry  as  to  the  powers  of  chromolithotint ; 
but  the  subject  is  completely  distinct  from  that 
of  colouring  by  hand,  and  I  have  been  so  much 
shaken  in  my  former  doubts  of  the  capability 
of  the  process  by  the  wonderful  facsimiles  of 
Turner  vignettes,  lately  executed  by  Mr.  Long, 
from  the  collection  in  the  subterranean  domain 


**THE  BLACK  ARTS."  217 

of  the  National  Gallery,  that  I  must  ask  per- 
mission for  farther  study  of  these  results  before 
venturing  on  any  debate  of  their  probable  range 
in  the  future. 


CHAPTER  XVI. 

EPILOGUE. 

There  is  little  for  me  to  add  to  this  essay.  I 
have  purposely  refrained  from  enlarging  on 
Ruskin's  many-sided  character  and  achieve- 
ments, lest  the  size  of  the  book  should  be  car- 
ried far  beyond  the  appointed  limits.  But  I 
have,  I  think,  done  enough  to  direct  the  atten- 
tion of  the  reader  to  many  of  the  chief — the 
most  important  or  the  most  amusing — of  Rus- 
kin's views,  and  to  awaken  a  desire  in  some  to 
study  the  works  of  one  of  the  most  original 
thinkers  and  most  interesting  writers  of  the  day. 
Opinions  may  vary  as  to  the  practicability  of 
his  synthetic  philosophy,  and  as  to  the  sound- 
ness of  what  he  held  to  be  the  basis  and  root- 
foundation  of  all  true  art.  He  may  have 
regarded  art  too  much  as  a  moralist  and  too 
little  as  a  technician  ;  he  may  have  raised  cer- 
tain individual  workers  too  high  in  the  compara- 
tive scale  of  art,  so  that  the  fall  from  off 
their  perches  has  been  inevitable.  To  all  such 
errors   and   more  a  great   reformer   is   liable, 

who  single-handed,  fierce  and  determined,  and 
218 


EPILOGUE.  219 

in  face  of  all  opposition,  has  sought  to  lift  the 
art  of  his  country  into  a  mighty  power  for 
good,  and  to  raise  her  conscience  at  the  same 
time  to  a  level  of  purity  and  morality.  But 
whatever  be  the  fate  of  his  teaching,  whatever 
the  destiny  of  his  artistic  fame,  he  will  always 
be  numbered  among  the  mighty  ones  of  the 
pen ;  one  of  the  greatest,  best,  and  kindest 
creatures  who  ever  fought  the  people's  fight  of 
righteousness  and  truth. 


INDEX. 


Acland,  Sir  Henry,  21 

Agates,  Ruskin's  collection  of,  137 

Agnew,    Miss,   see    Mrs.    Arthur 

Severn 
Albany,  Duke  of,  58 
Anderson,  Miss  Mary,  56 
Andrews,  Mr.,  Miniature  of  Rus- 

kin  by,  188 
Aratra  Pentelici,  67 
Architectural  Magazine,   Contri- 
butions to  the,  21 
Architecture  and    Painting,  Rus- 

kin  lectures  on,  178 
Architecture,  Ruskin's  views  on, 26 
Arro%vs  of  the  Chace,  I05 
Art  and  Architecture,  Papers  on,  21 
Art  Books,  Dulness  of,  200 
Art  of  England,  Lecture  on  the, 

192 
Art,  Ruskin's  views  of,  74,  84 
Artist,  Ruskin  as,  73  et  seq. 
Ashmore,  Charles,  Plaster  Medal- 
lion of  Ruskin,  186 
Author,    Bookman,    and    Stylist, 
Ruskin  as,  67  et  seq. 

Barraud's  Portrait  of  Ruskin,  169 
Barrett,  Wilson,  43 
Bedroom,  Ruskin's,  140 
Beever,  Miss  Susannah,  49,  107 
Bewick,  Ruskin's  criticism  of,  123 
Birds,  Ruskin's  love  of,  163 
Bishop  of  Carlisle,  Ruskin's  friend- 
ship with  the,  42 
Bishop  of  Manchester,  Discussion 

with  the,  42 
Bishops,  Ruskin  on,  42 
Boehm,  Sir  J.  Edgar,  R.A.,  Bust 

of  Ruskin  by,  190 
Bonheur,  Madame  Rosa,  on  Rus- 
kin, 74 


Books,  Collection  of,  130,  137 

Bookselling  Trade,  Disagreements 
with  the,  69 

Botticelli,  87,  133 

Brantwood,  125  et  seq.;  Acquisi- 
tion of,  1 29 ;  Description  of, 
129  et  seq.  ;  Daily  life  at,  159 

Brown,  Dr.  John,  208 

British  Museum,  Ruskin  arranges 
Silicas,  37 

Buckland,  Dr.,  Influence  on  Rus- 
kin, 21,  100 

Burne-Jones,  Drawings  by,  130 

Byron,  Influence  on  Ruskin,  71, 
109 


Carlyle  and  Ruskin,  31,  71,  99; 
visits  Brantwood,  146 

Carpaccio,  87 

Character,  Health,  and  Tempera- 
ment of  Ruskin,  40  et  seq. 

Characteristics,  Main,  of  Ruskin's 
mind,  41 

Charity,  Ruskin's,  47,  50  et  sea., 

55,  93 

Chesneau,  E.,  46 

Chess,  Ruskin  as  a  player  of,  57, 
162 

Children,  Ruskin's  love  for,  49 ; 
Education  of,  92,  212 

Churchill,  Mrs.  W.  H.,  44;  trav- 
els with  Ruskin,  147 

Claudian,  Ruskin  on,  56 

Cook,  E.  T.,  70,  80 

Cornhill  Magazine,  Contributions 

to,  30,  31  . 
Creswick,  Benjamin,  Bust  of  Rus- 
kin by,  1 88 
Critic,  Ruskin  on  the,  104 
Crown  of  Wild  Olive,  31 

9*  221 


222 


INDEX. 


Cruikshank,  George,  Ruskin's 
dealings  with  and  views  on, 
115^/  seq. 

Cycling,  Ruskin's  dislike  of,  90 

Daily  Telegraph,  104 

Dale,  Canon,  as  Ruskin's  tutor,  18 

Dame  Wiggins  of  Lee,  116 

Darwin  visits  Brantwood,  102; 
Ruskin's  views  upon  his  the- 
ory, 46,  loi 

Death,  Ruskin's  horror  of,  57 

Degree,  Ruskin  receives  B.A., 
22;  LL.D.,  31 

Discount,  Ruskin  objects  to  sys- 
tem of,  69 

Disraeli  and  Ruskin,  96 

Dixon,  Thomas,  106 

Drama,  Criticism  on  the  Modern, 

56 
Draughtsman,  Ruskin  as,  75 
Dressier,  Conrad,  Bust  of  Ruskin 
by,  193 ;  Impressions  of  Rus- 
kin, 197 
Dyce,  W.,  Advice  to  Ruskin  of,  29 

Eagle's  Nest,  68 

Education,  Ruskin's  views  on,  92 

et  seq.,  212 
Elements  of  Drawing,  68,  106 
Ethics  of  the  Dust,  96 

Fielding,  Copley,  Ruskin's  early 

teacher,  18,  75 
Forbes,  James,  teaches  geology  to 

Ruskin,  100 
Ears  Clavigera,  32,  106 
Frondes  Agrestes,  107 
Funerals,  Ruskin's  horror  of,  58 

Generosity  of  Ruskin,  37,  48  et 

seq.,  50,  93 
Geography,    Suggestions   for  im- 
proved teaching  of,  214 
Geology,  Ruskin's  study  and  love 

of,  21,  100 
Glacier  des  Bossons,  Chamouni,  75 
Gladstone,  Mr.,  and  Ruskin,  96,  99 
Goodwin,  Dr.   Harvey,  Ruskin's 
friendship  for,  42 


Gordon,  Rev.  Osbtwne,  influence 
on  Ruskin,  22 

Graphic,  Porlrait  of  Ruskin  pub- 
lished in,  192 

Greenaway,  Miss  Kate,  Portrait  ot 
Ruskin  begun  by,  192;  ad- 
miration of  Ruskin  for  the 
art  of,  192 

Grimm,  Plates  of  Cruikshank  for, 
116 

Hamerton,  P.  G.,  on  Ruskin,  25 

Harding,  J.  D.,  Ruskin's  early 
teacher,  18,  75 

Harrison,  W.  H.,  Influence  on 
Ruskin  of,  22 

Health,  Ruskin's,  and  its  influ- 
ence, 40  et  seq. 

Herkomer,  Prof.  Hubert,  R.A., 
Portrait  of  Ruskin  by,  191 

Hill,  Miss  Octavia,  and  Ruskin,  33 

Hilliard,  Miss,  see  Mrs.  Churchill 

History  of  Christian  Art,  26 

Hogarth,  Ruskin  on,  123 

Hogg,  the  Ettrick  Shepherd,  Let- 
ter to,  109 

Holl,  Francis,  A.R.A.,  Engraving 
of  Ruskin  by,  185 

Home  life  at  Coniston,  157  et 
seq. 

Hortus  Inclusus,  46 

Hunt,W.  Holman,  26,  76, 143, 181 

Illness,  Attacks  of,  38,  60 
Illustrated  work.  Perfection  of,  214 
Italy,  Ruskin's  trips  to,  25,  147 

Journalistic     correspondence     of 
Ruskin,  103 

Lang,  Andrew,  88 
Leeds  Mercury,  104 
Letter-writer,  Ruskin  35,103^/^^^. 
Letters,  Private,  107 
Life  of  Ruskin,  17  et  seq. 
Linton,  W.  J.,  owned  Brantwood, 

126 
Literary  Gazette,  The,  104 
Long,  W.,  Chromo-lithotiiUs  by, 

216 
Luini,  87 


INDEX. 


223 


Magazine   of  Art,    Ruskin    con- 
tributes to,  199  et  seq. 
Magazine  of  Natural  History,  21 
Manchester  City  News,  104 
Manchester  Examiner  and  Times, 

104 
Manuscript  illumination,  216 
Mathematics,  Ruskin's  dislike  of, 

loi 
Maurice,  Rev.  F.  D.,  31 
Millais,   Sir  John  Everett,  R.A., 
26;    Portrait  of  Ruskin   by, 
178 
Mineral  Collection,  Ruskin's,  137 
Mineralogist,  Ruskin  as,  137 
Modern  Painters,  Publication  of, 
22 ;    Ruskin's   valuation    of, 
67,  213 
Monetary  Gazette,  The,  104 
Morning  Post,  The,  104 
Morris,  William,  on  Ruskin,  91 
Muscle  versus  Machinery,  89 

Northcote,  James,  R.A.,  Portraits 
of  Ruskin,  130,  170;  Rus- 
kin's esteem  for,  173 

Norton,  Professor  C.  A.,  Gift  of 
Portrait  to,  186 

Outline,  Value  of,  211 

Oxford,  Ruskin  enters  Christ- 
church,  21 ;  endows  Taylor- 
ian  Galleries,  37 ;  Lectures, 
68 

Pall  Mall  Gazette,  104 
Palmerston  and  Ruskin,  96 
Paris,  Ruskin  in,  148 
Philosophy,  Ruskin's  early,  83 
Picture,  Ruskin's   summary  of  a 

good,  208 
Pilotelle,     Georges,     sketch      of 

Ruskin,  187 
Poems,  Publication  of   Ruskin's, 

109 
Poet,  Ruskin  as,  109  et  seq. 
Poetry  of  Architecture,  21 
Political  Economy,  Ruskin's  the- 

oiy  of,  96 
Politician,  Ruskin  as,  99 


Portraits  of  Ruskin,  165  et  seq; 
Barraud,  169;  James  North- 
cote, R.A.,  170;  George 
Richmond,  R.A.,  174,  182; 
Sir  John  Everett  Millais, R.  A., 
177;  Engraved  by  Francis 
Holl,  A.R.A.,  1S5  ;  Rossetti, 
185;  by  himself,  186;  Mod- 
elled by  Charles  Ashmore, 
186;  Georges  Pilotelle,  187; 
Andrews,  188;  Arthur  Sev- 
ern, 188;  Benjamin  Creswick, 
r88;  Modelled  by  Sir  J. 
Edgar  Boehm,  R.A.,  190; 
Professor  Hubert  Herkomer, 
R.A.,  191 ;  Miss  Kate  Green- 
away,  192;  T.  Blake  Wirg- 
man,  192;  Modelled  by  Con- 
rad Dressier,  193 

PrcEterita,   113,  194 

Pre-Raphaelite  Brotherhood,  Rus- 
kin and  the,  26,  29,  178 

Press,  Attitude  of,  towards  Rus- 
kin, 70 

Prout,  Esteem  of  Ruskin  for,  76; 
Drawings  of,  133 

Quarterly  Review,  Ruskin  con- 
tributes to  the,  26;  attacks 
Ruskin,  83 

Railways,  Ruskin's  hatred  of,  89 

Reader,  The,  104 

Religious  opinions  of  Ruskin,  102 

Richmond,  George,  R.A.,  Por- 
traits of  Ruskin,  174,  182; 
travels  with  Ruskin,  175 

Roberts,  David,  Ruskin's  ameni- 
ties with,  76 

Rossetti,  Dante  Gabriel,  29;  Por- 
trait of  Ruskin  by,  185 

Rossetti,  W.  M.,  26 

Rouen  Cathedral  Spire,  Drawing 
of,  76 

Ruskin,  John,  birth  of,  17;  his 
love  of  scenery  and  art  de- 
veloped, i8;  first  painting 
lessons  of,  18;  first  appear- 
ance in  public  press,  21 ;  en- 
ters Christchurch,Oxford,  21  ; 


224 


INDEX. 


gains  Newdigate  Prize,  22 ; 
graduates  B.A.,  22  ;  publishes 
Modern  Painters,  22 ;  cen- 
tral event  of  his  life,  22; 
founds  a  school  of  painting, 
26;  wages  war  against  ex- 
isting commercial  morality, 
30 ;  elected  Rede  Lecturer  at 
Cambridge,  31 ;  appointed 
Professor  of  Fine  Art  at  Ox- 
ford, 32 ;  begins  Fors  Clavi- 
gcra,  32;  gifts  to  public  in- 
stitutions, 37  ;  first  attacked 
by  illness,  38 ;  resigns  Slade 
Professorship,  38 ;  rupture 
with  Oxford  University,  39; 
retires  from  personal  contact 
with  public,  39;  as  a  chess 
player,  57,  162;  critic  of  his 
own  works,  68,  72;  theories 
of  art,  74,  211 ;  deplores  the 
decadence  of  art,  87 ;  ac- 
quires the  art  of  crossing- 
sweeping,  88 ;  the  apotheosis 
of  the  navvy,  88;  a  theistic 
philosopher,  91 ;  as  politician, 
99;  as  geologist,  lOO;  corre- 
spondent of  the  public  jour- 
nals, 103  ;  intended  for  the 
Church,  109;  facility  in  verse- 
making,  109;  travels  abroad, 
147,  175;  methodical  ways, 
157;  dailylife,  157, 159,  i6i; 
a  tireless  walker,  160;  as  in- 
ventor, 1 74 ;  portrait  of  him- 
self, 186;  dissatisfied  with  all 
his  portraits,  197;  enjoys 
judiciously  applied  flattery, 
197;  amused  by  dissected 
maps,  214 

Ruskin,  John,  Senior,  Portrait  of, 
173;  death  of,  32 

Ruskin,  Mrs.,  32,  135 

Ruskin  Societies  of  the  Rose 
founded,  34 

Salsette  and  Elcphania,  22 
Sandys,  Frederick,  30 
School  Board,  Ruskin 's  views  on 
the,  92 


Scotland,  Ruskin  in,  178 

Scotsman,  The,  104 

Scott,  Sir  Walter,  no;  Raskin's 
admiration  of,  133;  original 
manuscripts  of,  138;  read 
aloud  by  Ruskin,  160 

Sesame  and  Lilies,  31 

Seven  Lamps  of  Architecture,  26, 
68 

Severn,  Arthur,  R.I.,  Portrait  of 
Ruskin  by,  188 

Severn,  Mrs.  Arthur,  44,  145,  147, 

155 
Shells,  Ruskin's  collection  of,  133 
Smetham,  James,  Letters  to,  106 ; 
description  of  Ruskin  by,  159 
Slade  Professor,  Ruskin  appointed 
in    1870,   32;    re-elected   in 
1876, 38 ;  resigned  in  1S79, 32 
Stature  of  Ruskin,  166 
Stephens,  Frederick  G.,  26 
St.  George's  Guild  established,  ;^2, 
St.  George's  Museum  at  Walkley 
established,    37 ;    transferred 
to  Meersbrook  Park,  38 
St.  Mark's  Venice,  Ruskin's  stud- 
ies of,  133 
Stones  of  Venice,  68 
Study  at  Brantwood,  134 
Stylist,  Ruskin  as,  67  et  seq. 
Switzerland,  Ruskin  in,  151 

Taylorian    Galleries    at    Oxford, 

Gifts  to,  37 
Teacher,  Ruskin  as,  80 
Thackeray,  Editor  of  Cornhill,  31 
Theatre,  Ruskin's  love  for  the,  55 
The  Angel  in  the  House,  145  etseq. 
Time  and    Tide   by    Weare  and 

Tyne,  96,  106 
Times,  Ruskin's  celebrated  letter 

to  the,  29,  103 
Tintoret,  87 
Trevelyan,  Lady,  travels  abroad 

with  Ruskin,  147  ;  her  death, 

148 
Turner,  Ruskin's  defence  of,  22, 

87;  Ruskin's  admiration  of, 

76;  portrait  of,  130;    draw 

ings  by,  137 


INDEX. 


225 


Tyndall,    Professor,    Ruskin   on, 
loi, lis 

Ugliness,  Ruskiu's  condemnation 

of,  123 
Unto  this  Last,  30 

Val  D'Arno,  68 

Venice,  26,  68 

Verse-making,    Ruskin's    facility 

in,  109 
View  of  things,   Ruskin's,  96  et 

seq. 
Vivisection,  Ruskin  opposed  to,  39 


Waldstein,  Dr.,  on  Ruskin,  91 

Watts,  G.  F.,  R.A.,  and  Ruskin, 
166 

Waverley  Novels,  Manuscripts  of 
the,  138 

Whistler,  Ruskin's  criticism  on, 
and  subsequent  trial,  ^t, 

Wirgman,  T.  Blake,  Portrait  of 
Ruskin  by,  192 

Women,  Ruskin's  sentiments  to- 
wards, 43 

Woolner,  T.,  R.A.,  29,  177,  180 

Working  Men's  College,  Rus- 
kin's interest  in  the,  31 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 
Los  Angeles 

This  book  is  DUE  on  the  last  date  stamped  below. 


4jWiJi^  ^^%, 


Ki'«^   MAY 2  0  ^^66 
MAY  1  C'  1968 

WAR    8lSb/| 


Form  L9-42»i-8,'49(B5573)444 


THE  LIBKAKY 
UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 


l^i 


'^>^,  A  4 


3  1158  006 1(j'T5 


-rP 


> 


NEDW.CirS  BOOK  STORl 

171   NO.   MICHIGAN  AVE. 
CHICAGO   1,  ILL. 


AA    000  383  380 


